Riot police were deployed to Yuen Long station around 1am after thugs attacked passengers. Videos of passengers screaming as the men entered train carriages to beat people with bamboo sticks were spread rapidly online and screened on news broadcasts. Police fire tear gas at protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday night. Credit:AP At least two reporters and a sports broadcaster were beaten and a TV camera destroyed by the gangs of men in white shirts who ran through the station to target people they thought were protesters. Blood was left smeared across the station concourse.

Democratic Party legislator Lam Cheuk-ting was bleeding in the face after being struck at the station, which was closed early by rail operators MTR following the attacks. A statement from the organisers of the earlier protest march, which had been peaceful, condemned the attacks on protesters returning home. Medical workers help a protester after police fired tear gas in an effort to break up crowds. Credit:AP "Real thugs have attacked passersby, a journalist and a lawmaker, badly injuring them, but the police have failed to enforce the law. This has angered us greatly," the statement from the Civil Human Rights Front read. Police reportedly took 45 minutes to get to the scene. The government said in a statement it condemned the violence at the Yuen Long station where commuters had been injured, as well as actions by "some radical protesters" at Sheung Wan.

"This is absolutely unacceptable to Hong King as a society that observed the rule of law," the government statement released in the early hours of Monday said. Thousands of masked protesters remained on the city streets and formed supply lines passing umbrellas and barricades to the frontline after 8pm when police announced they would launch a clearance operation in the west near Beijing’s offices. Graffiti insulting Chinese president Xi Jinping was sprayed on the Central Government Liaison Office, which the protest march reached in the early evening. Hundreds of thousand of protesters had ignored a police demand that the authorised rally end short, on the other side of the glossy Central district.

Police had attempted to curb the march, which was organised by the Civil Human Rights Front, to call for an independent commission into police behaviour at earlier protests. Riot police officer point weapons during a confrontation with protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday. Credit:AP At 10pm large numbers of protesters had gathered on Central’s glossiest shopping streets, outside Louis Vuitton and Tiffany stores. On Pedder Street protesters huddled under umbrellas like a rugby scrum to build barricades to block police advancing by tying fences with cable ties. Mainland Chinese newspaper The Global Times condemned the defacing of China’s offices and said the protesters were causing "chaos". Earlier in the afternoon people had marched through the parliament district and occupied major roads outside the Legislative Council in a large but peaceful act of civil disobedience.

Loading "We want to fight for our freedom. Even though Carrie Lam said the extradition bill was dead, we want it withdrawn and Lam to step down. We want universal suffrage," said Ching, aged 37. He said at 6.40pm he kept walking to Central despite passing the official end point of the march because "the police just disappeared". Outside police headquarters protesters had turned huge water filled barricades, placed there to protect the building, into Lennon Walls - walls covered with sticky notes urging political reform. The Legislative Council was also barricaded. But there were few police to be seen on the street, and the Central Government Liaison Office was left exposed.

After police moved towards the western district there was a deafening roar as protesters retreated to Central. But human chains were set up to send umbrellas to the frontline. Riot police walk toward a cloud of tear gas as they attempt to disperse demonstrators during a protest in the Sheung Wan district of Hong Kong. Credit:Bloomberg Tens of thousands of masked protesters lined the street cheering as barricades were carried along the road. Multiple Lennon Walls sprung up along the route. Man, 30, wrote "Be water", a famous quote from kung fu star Bruce Lee that has been adopted as the young protesters' motto as they try to evade arrest.