World

HONG KONG — Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters filled the streets of Hong Kong late on Tuesday, stockpiling supplies and erecting makeshift barricades ahead of what some fear may be a push by police to clear the roads before Chinese national day.

On the eve of Wednesday's anniversary of the Communist Party's foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, crowds poured into central districts of the Asian financial hub, near where national day festivities are scheduled to take place.

There was a carnival atmosphere among demonstrators, in contrast to weekend clashes when riot police fired pepper spray and tear gas to quell the unrest.

Nevertheless, rumours have spread among protesters that police could be preparing to move in again, as the pro-Beijing government, which has called the demonstrations illegal, vowed to go ahead with celebrations.

"Many powerful people from the mainland will come to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government won't want them to see this, so the police must do something," Sui-ying Cheng, 18, a freshman at Hong Kong University's School of Professional and Continuing Education, said of the national day holiday.

"We are not scared. We will stay here tonight. Tonight is the most important," she said.

Online student groups urged supporters to move towards the convention centre, near the harbour waterfront, ahead of a planned flag-raising ceremony there on Wednesday morning.

Student leaders had given Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying an ultimatum to come out and address the protesters before midnight on Tuesday, threatening to escalate action in the next few days to occupy more government facilities, buildings and public roads if he failed to do so.

The protesters, mostly students, are demanding full democracy and have called on Leung to step down after Beijing ruled a month ago that it would vet candidates wishing to run for Hong Kong's leadership in 2017.

While Leung has said Beijing would not back down in the face of protests, he also said Hong Kong police would be able to maintain security without help from People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops from the mainland.

In a blog post published shortly before the students' deadline, Leung urged city residents to abandon the protest movement, widely known as "Occupy Central", immediately.

"The impact on the value of Hong Kong's international image is becoming greater and greater," he wrote. "I hope you will all think about this."

The outside world has looked on warily, concerned that the clashes could spread and trigger a much harsher crackdown.

In Britain’s strongest interjection yet, finance chief George Osborne urged China to seek peace and said the former colony’s prosperity depended on freedom.

Washington has urged the Hong Kong authorities “to exercise restraint and for protesters to express their views peacefully”. 

 China rules Hong Kong under a "one country, two systems" formula that accords the former British colony a degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China, with universal suffrage set as an eventual goal.

BRUSSELS — The European Union decided Tuesday to keep a tough package of economic sanctions against Russia in place, saying that the peace plan in Ukraine was not yet fully implemented.

Brussels imposed its latest measures against Moscow earlier this month but with the condition that they could be dropped or amended depending on the results of the review, which had a deadline of September 30.

EU spokeswoman Maja Kojicancic said Tuesday that diplomats from member states agreed there had been "encouraging developments" in "some aspects" of the peace deal agreed between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels earlier this month in Minsk, Belarus.

But she said that "relevant parts of the same protocol will need to be properly implemented".

Kojicancic added that the EU would continue to "closely monitor developments on the ground", and stressed that it would keep the progress of the Ukraine peace deal under review, although she did not set a deadline.

"If the situation on the ground so warrants, the Commission and the EEAS [EU diplomatic service] would be invited to put forward to the Council proposals to amend, suspend or repeal the set of sanctions in force, in all or in part."

EU President Herman Van Rompuy had made the same promise on September 11, after the EU finally agreed on the sanctions following a week of torturous negotiations in which some member states wanted a softer approach towards Russia after it agreed the ceasefire with Kiev.

The measures imposed by the 28-nation bloc targeted major Russian energy, finance and defence companies including oil giant Rosneft and weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov.

The bloc also imposed asset freezes and visa bans on a host of Russian figures including allies of President Vladimir Putin as well as rebels in Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

Ukraine's rival parties signed a 12-point peace plan in Minsk on September 5 in a bid to end the five-month conflict.

The truce was reinforced with a September 20 deal that established a 30-kilometre  buffer zone and allows European monitors to report any resumption of bloodshed that has already claimed more 3,200 lives.

Russian media reports this week had suggested that the sanctions could be lifted.

But fighting in Ukraine has continued with the deadliest wave of attacks in a month, with nine soldiers and four civilians killed in 24 hours, officials said Monday, spelling an ominous run-up to October 26 parliamentary polls.

The EU sanctions adopted in September are a toughening-up of measures adopted in July after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over rebel-held east Ukraine.

BEIJING — Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have handed China's communist leadership a thorny political dilemma.

Beijing cannot crack down too harshly on the semi-autonomous territory where a freewheeling media ensures global visibility, but it is determined to end the demonstrations quickly so as not to embolden dissidents, separatists and anti-government protesters elsewhere in China.

Demonstrators demanding a greater say in choosing the financial centre's leader, or chief executive, defied attempts over the weekend by riot police to end their sit-ins with blasts of tear gas and pepper spray, and on Monday fanned out to more neighbourhoods of Hong Kong in a tense standoff.

"The Chinese authorities do not want to see it spread to the mainland," said Beijing-based historian and political analyst Zhang Lifan. "It has put tremendous pressure on Beijing, which is most worried about a domino effect."

Beijing's increasingly hard-line leadership, which has clamped down over the past year and a half on dissent and any calls for greater democracy, is highly unlikely to agree to any discussion about political reforms in Hong Kong. Nor does it want bloodshed.

But it will use force — as much as it deems necessary — to ensure stability, Zhang said.

"After all, it believes that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, instead of elections," he said. "It will return to this simplistic law of the jungle."

An opinion piece that was briefly available on the news site of the nationalistic Chinese newspaper Global Times suggested Beijing send its military police, part of China's armed forces, to help in "suppressing the riots." The editorial was later deleted. In Hong Kong, Beijing-backed Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying denied what he called "rumours" that the Chinese military would intervene.

So far, the situation hasn't reached the point of requiring troops, said Steve Tsang, senior fellow at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute. Even the decision by Hong Kong's territorial government over the weekend to use riot police went too far, putting the still-peaceful demonstrations on a dangerous trajectory, Tsang said.

"If the authorities change the tactic, go back to the traditional method of policing, pull back the riot police and talk to the people, we will have the demonstration back in the defined area," Tsang said.

Beijing will orchestrate the use of force if necessary to break up crowds and keep military deployment only as a last resort, said Willy Lam, an analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"It's possible Hong Kong police have enough muscle so they could use water cannons and other things, perhaps rubber bullets, to disperse the crowds," Lam said.

The protests reflect disillusionment with mainland Chinese rule among Hong Kongers, especially the younger generation, who feel Beijing has failed to keep promises of greater democracy for the territory. Those promises were written into Hong Kong's charter as part of the "one country, two systems" arrangement that Britain negotiated with Beijing when the former colony was returned to China in 1997.

Last month, Beijing rejected a proposal for open nominations of candidates for Hong Kong's first-ever leadership election, promised for 2017. Instead, all candidates must continue to be picked by a panel that is mostly aligned with Beijing.

Residents have "realised Beijing will not change its mind, and they want to send the message that 'we want to hold our future in our hands,'" Lam said.

Any crackdown would play out in front of a relatively free news media in Hong Kong, which under "one country, two systems" has kept its own legal system and many Western-style civil liberties not enjoyed on the mainland.

Chinese state media, on the other hand, have provided little coverage of the Hong Kong protests beyond noting that an illegal gathering spun out of control and was being curtailed by police.

The Chinese government's main official response to the protests was a brief statement condemning their illegal assembly and throwing its support behind the Leung administration's attempts to disperse the crowds.

"We believe the majority of Hong Kong residents will not tolerate a few people's radical, illegal activism at the cost of Hong Kong's rule of law, stability and prosperity," China's liaison office with Hong Kong said in the statement Sunday.

China's main TV broadcaster, CCTV, showed no images from the Hong Kong streets. That contrasted sharply with its detailed coverage of the protests and tension surrounding the August shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man in Ferguson, Missouri, with on-site reporters and studio analysts discussing racism and inequality in American society.

However, an alternate narrative has seeped into the mainland through cellphone instant messaging services. Users have posted video clips and photos from Hong Kong streets, as well as articles on the unrest sent as photo images — not text — so they can circumvent censorship that involves searching text messages for key phrases.

Discussions were muted on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo, where Beijing has tightened censorship and intimidated microbloggers from posting politically sensitive materials following a clampdown last year. China also has blocked access to the photo-sharing service Instagram.

Lam said that, however, the protests unfold, Hong Kong's people have sent a strong signal that "the rule of the game has changed" and they are no longer content only with China's economic prosperity without a say in their future.

In downtown Beijing, economist and frequent government critic Wen Kejian said Hong Kongers should be given a genuine choice.

"The economy of Hong Kong has already been so prosperous and the city has been so open and international that the people of Hong Kong have the wisdom to master their political future," Wen said. "Stability without freedom is slavery. It is meaningless."

BARCELONA — The Spanish government on Monday rolled out a legal roadblock to stop the Catalonia region voting on independence, branding the planned ballot an affront to the sovereignty of Spain.

After Catalonia's President Artur Mas staked his leadership on the issue by calling the vote for November 9, the national government responded by filing a constitutional challenge.

Conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he "deeply" regretted Mas' move, saying it "divides Catalans, alienates them from Europe and the rest of Spain and seriously harms their welfare".

He said the government had sent the appeal to the constitutional court and that Mas' measures would be suspended as soon as that tribunal accepted the appeal, pending a final decision by its judges.

Buoyed by mass street demonstrations, Mas has pushed ahead for a vote in defiance of Rajoy's warnings.

Since he signed a decree on Saturday calling the vote, a luminous clock on Barcelona's historic Sant Jaume Square has been ticking down the seconds to November 9.

"You cannot use the law to prevent people indefinitely from stating their opinion," Mas said in a television interview on Sunday in anticipation of Monday's appeal.

"Voting on November is the best thing for everyone because it will allow us and also the Spanish government to know what the Catalan people's opinion is."

Rajoy retorted on Monday that the right to decide on a region's status belonged to "all of the Spanish people" under the country's 1978 constitution — the keystone of Spain's democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.

"There is nothing and no one, no power nor institution, that can break this principle of sole sovereignty," Rajoy told reporters after an extraordinary Cabinet meeting.

The appeal did not put off supporters of independence, who vowed to continue preparing for the vote, setting up a tense standoff over the coming weeks.

"We are committed to voting on November 9," said Oriol Junqueras, leader of the left-wing Catalan nationalist party ERC, which is allied with Mas' conservative CiU grouping in the regional parliament.

"We are aware of the great difficulties we will face in the coming days but we are ready to face those difficulties."

Fired up by Scotland's independence referendum earlier this month, vast crowds turned out in Barcelona on September 11 to demand their own vote.

Scottish voters eventually chose not to be independent from Britain.

But like Scotland, Catalonia "wants to be heard and it wants to vote", Mas said.

Mas has vowed to let Catalans vote on independence but has also promised to respect Spanish law.

He has hinted that if the government blocks the vote, he could put his leadership at stake in an early regional election, which could serve as a plebiscite on the issue.

Catalonia is Spain's economic powerhouse, accounting for about a fifth of the country's economy. But like the rest of Spain, it suffered from the 2008 property crash and resulting economic downturn.

Proud of their Catalan language and culture, many of the region's 7.5 million inhabitants feel short-changed by the government in Madrid which redistributes their taxes.

The independence movement in Catalonia has gathered strength in recent years as Spain's economic crisis has increased unemployment and hardship in the region and swelled its debts.

Catalonia formally adopted the status of a "nation" in 2006 but the constitutional court overruled that claim.

The main opposition Socialist Party is calling for a constitutional reform instead of a vote to answer Catalan demands for greater autonomy.

The Socialists' leader Pedro Sanchez on Monday said the referendum plan "deeply damages Spanish democracy".

MOSCOW — Moscow called on Sunday for a new "reset 2.0" in relations with Washington, saying the situation in Ukraine that had led to Western sanctions against Russia was improving thanks to Kremlin peace initiatives.

Washington and Brussels accuse Moscow of supporting a pro-Russian rebellion in east Ukraine and have imposed sanctions, which they have repeatedly tightened since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March.

The conflict has brought relations between Moscow and the West to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War. US President Barack Obama said last week that the sanctions could be lifted if Russia takes the path of peace and diplomacy.

In television interviews, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was time to repeat the "reset", a word Washington used to describe an attempt to mend ties early in Obama's presidency.

But he also lashed out at NATO's "Cold War mentality", criticised Washington for excluding Russia's ally Bashar Assad from its campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria, and said Washington "can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world".

"We are absolutely interested in bringing the ties to normal but it was not us who destroyed them. Now they require what the American would probably call a 'reset'," Lavrov said, according to a transcript of one interview on his ministry's website.

"The current US administration is destroying today much of the cooperation structure that it created itself along with us. Most likely, something more will come up — a reset No. 2 or a reset 2.0," he told Russia's Channel 5 television.

Shortly after Obama took office in 2009, his then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton presented Lavrov with a red “reset” button intended to signal a fresh start to relations that had been strained under Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.

In a diplomatic gaffe much mocked at the time, the button bore a Russian label that said “overload” instead of “reset”; the two words are similar in Russian.

Lavrov said that thanks to “initiatives of the Russian President”, the situation was improving on the ground in Ukraine, where a ceasefire has been in place for several weeks.

The September 5 truce is largely holding though some fighting has continued in places including the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

“The ceasefire is taking shape, though of course not without problems. Monitoring mechanisms have been introduced, talks between Russia, the European Union and Ukraine have started, gas talks have restarted,” Lavrov said.

Western countries say thousands of Russian troops have fought in Ukraine and accuse Moscow of sending weapons, including a surface-to-air missile used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner over rebel-held territory in July. Moscow denies participating in the conflict or arming the rebels.

Cold war

Speaking to Russia’s state-funded international broadcaster, RT, Lavrov said “NATO still has the Cold War mentality”, and Moscow needed to modernise its conventional and nuclear arms, though he denied this would lead to “a new arms race”.

Lavrov also repeated Russian criticism of the US-led air campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria, accusing Washington of a “double standard” for refusing to cooperate with Syrian president Assad. Washington has repeatedly called for Assad’s dismissal and backed some of the rebels fighting to topple him since early 2011.

“There’s no room for petty grievances in politics,” Lavrov told RT. “I very much hope that the United States will finally... realise that they can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world and that they need to cooperate to resolve issues.”

Lavrov said that despite the Western sanctions, Russia did not feel isolated on the world stage. Moscow has responded to the sanctions by banning most Western food imports.

“We feel no isolation. But, having said that, I want to emphasise in particular that we do not want to go to extremes, and abandon the European and American directions in our foreign economic cooperation,” Lavrov told Channel 5.

“We have no desire to continue a sanctions war, trading blows,” Lavrov also said. “First of all, it is important that our partners understand the futility of ultimatums and threats.”

HONG KONG — Hong Kong police fired volleys of tear gas to disperse pro-democracy protests on Sunday and baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings against illegal demonstrations.

Chaos had engulfed the city's Admiralty district as chanting protesters converged on police barricades surrounding more demonstrators who had earlier launched a "new era" of civil disobedience to pressure Beijing into granting full democracy.

Police, in lines five deep in places and wearing helmets and gas masks, used pepper spray against activists and shot tear gas into the air. The crowds fled several hundred yards, scattering their umbrellas and hurling abuse at police "cowards".

The demonstrators regrouped and returned however, and by early evening tens of thousands of protesters were thronging streets, including outside the prominent Pacific Place shopping mall that leads towards the Central financial district.

"If today I don't stand out, I will hate myself in future," said taxi driver Edward Yeung, 55, as he swore at police on the frontline. "Even if I get a criminal record it will be a glorious one."

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as "one country, two systems" that guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.

But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader, prompting threats from activists to shut down Central in what is being seen as the most tenacious civil disobedience action since Britain handed over its former colony.

China wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing.

Police in full riot equipment later fired repeated rounds of tear gas to clear some of the roads in Admiralty and pushed the crowds towards central. Health authorities later said some 30 people needed treatment.

Police had not used tear gas in Hong Kong since breaking up protests by South Korean farmers against the World Trade Organisation in 2005.

"We will fight until the end... we will never give up," said Peter Poon, a protester in his 20s, adding that they may have to make a temporary retreat through the night.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying had earlier pledged "resolute" action against the protest movement, known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace.

"The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law," Leung said, less than two hours before the police charge began.

A spokesperson for China's Hong Kong and Macau affairs office added that the central government fully supported Hong Kong's handling of the situation "in accordance with the law".

Communist Party leaders in Beijing are concerned about calls for democracy spreading to cities on the mainland, threatening their grip on power. Such dissent would never be tolerated on the mainland, where student protests in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square calling for democracy were crushed with heavy loss of life on June 4, 1989.

On the mainland, the phrase "Occupy Central" was blocked on Sunday afternoon on Weibo, China's version of twitter. It had been allowed earlier in the day.

Later, a Hong Kong government statement urged the Occupy organisers to bring an end to the "chaos" for the overall interest of Hong Kong.

A tearful Occupy organiser Benny Tai said he was proud of people's determination to fight for "genuine" universal suffrage, but that the situation was getting out of control, RTHK reported. He said he believed he would face heavy punishment for initiating the movement.

Publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai, a key backer of the democracy movement, said he wanted as big a crowd of protesters as possible, after a week of student demonstrations, to thwart any crackdown.

"The more Hong Kong citizens come, the more unlikely the police can clear up the place," said Lai, also wearing a plastic cape and workmen's protective glasses. "Even if we get beaten up, we cannot fight back. We will win this war with love and peace."

Organisers said as many as 80,000 people thronged the streets in Admiralty, galvanised by the arrests of student activists on Friday. No independent estimate of the crowd numbers was available.

TOKYO — Thirty-one people were presumed dead on Sunday near the peak of a Japanese volcano that erupted a day earlier, catching hundreds of hikers unawares as it belched out clouds of rock and ash.

The deaths on Mount Ontake, 200km west of Tokyo, were the first from a Japanese volcanic eruption since 1991.

Police said the 31 were found in "cardio-pulmonary arrest", but declined to confirm their deaths pending a formal examination, as per Japanese custom. Public broadcaster NHK and the Kyodo news agency later reported that four, all male, had been confirmed dead.

An official in the area said rescue efforts had been called off due to rising levels of toxic gas near the peak, as well as approaching nightfall.

Hundreds of people, including children, were stranded on the mountain, a popular hiking site, after it erupted without warning on Saturday, sending ash pouring down the slope for more than 3km.

Most made their way down later on Saturday but about 40 spent the night near the 3,067-metre peak. Some wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled in the basement of buildings.

"The roof on the mountain lodge was destroyed by falling rock, so we had to take refuge below the building," one told NHK national television. "That's how bad it was."

More than 40 people were injured, several with broken bones.

Earlier, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency had said authorities were trying to confirm the whereabouts of 45 people.

It was not clear whether those 45 included the 31 people found in cardio-pulmonary arrest.

The volcano was still erupting on Sunday, pouring smoke and ash hundreds of metres into the sky. Ash was found on cars as far as 80km away.

Volcanoes erupt periodically in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active nations, but there have been no fatalities since 1991, when 43 people died in a pyroclastic flow, a superheated current of gas and rock, at Mount Unzen in the southwest of the country.

Ontake, Japan's second-highest volcano, last erupted seven years ago. Its last major eruption was in 1979.

Satoshi Saito, a 52-year-old hiker who climbed Ontake on Saturday and descended less than an hour before the eruption, said the weather was good and the mountain, known for its autumn foliage, was crowded with people carrying cameras.

"There were no earthquakes or strange smells on the mountain when I was there," Saito, who usually climbs Ontake several times a year, told Reuters. He also said there were no warnings of possible eruptions posted on the trail.

"But a man who runs a hotel near the mountain told me that the number of small earthquakes had risen these past two months, and everyone thought it was weird," Saito said.

Enveloping blackness

Video footage on the Internet showed huge grey clouds boiling towards climbers at the peak and people scrambling to descend as blackness enveloped them. NHK footage showed windows in a mountain lodge darkening and people screaming as heavy objects pelted the roof.

"All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly that we couldn't even open the door," Shuichi Mukai, who worked in a mountain lodge just below the peak, told Reuters. The building quickly filled with hikers taking refuge.

"We were really packed in, maybe 150 people. There were some children crying, but most people were calm. We waited there in hard hats until they told us it was safe to come down."

Flights at Tokyo's Haneda Airport suffered delays on Saturday as planes changed routes to avoid the volcano, but were mostly back to normal by Sunday, an airport spokeswoman said.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire", a horseshoe-shaped band of fault lines and volcanoes circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean, and is home to 110 active volcanoes.

One of these, Sakurajima at the southern end of the western island of Kyushu, is 50km from Kyushu Electric Power's Sendai nuclear plant, which was approved to restart by Japan's nuclear regulator earlier in September.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has said the chance of volcanic activity during the Sendai plant's lifespan is negligible, even though five giant calderas, crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, are also nearby.

Kyushu Electric has said it will install new monitoring equipment around nearby calderas and develop plans to remove highly radioactive fuel to a safer site if the threat of an eruption is detected.

There are no nuclear plants near Ontake.

An official at the volcano division of the Japan Meteorological Agency said that, while there had been a rising number of small earthquakes detected at Ontake since September 10, the eruption could not have been predicted easily.

"There were no other signs of an imminent eruption, such as earth movements or changes on the mountain's surface," the official told Reuters. "With only the earthquakes, we couldn't really say this would lead to an eruption."

HONG KONG — Hong Kong riot police used pepper spray to disperse protesters around government headquarters on Saturday, fuelling tension ahead of a planned sit-in by pro-democracy activists to oppose Beijing's tightening grip on the city.

Clashes through the night between police carrying riot shields and scores of demonstrators underscore the challenges China faces in Hong Kong as a restive younger generation challenges its influence in the former British colony.

Several people suffered minor injuries.

The protesters got into the city's main government compound late on Friday by forcing their way through a police cordon and scaling perimeter fences in the culmination of a weeklong rally to demand free elections.

They were removed one by one, some of them carried away, according to witnesses. On Saturday, hundreds were still sitting near the compound close to Hong Kong's financial district.

"The police have used disproportionate force to stop the legitimate actions of the students and that should be condemned," said Benny Tai, one of the three main organisers of the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.

Police arrested 61 people in the clearance operation, including 48 men and 13 women.

Several thousand protesters had massed on streets outside the headquarters in the early hours of Saturday in support of those who had stormed inside, shouting "retreat, retreat, retreat" as police advanced and tried to stop them charging.

Many protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from the pepper spray. Those who got hit used water to rinse their eyes.

"I paid my highest respect to every soldier who defends till the last moment... Civil disobedience — it continues to happen," said student leader Lester Shum on his Facebook page.

Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as "one country, two systems", with a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.

But Beijing last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader in 2017, prompting threats from activists to shut down the Central financial district in a so-called Occupy central campaign. China wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to Beijing.

Student activists urged people to gather on Saturday night for fresh demonstrations.

Leaders of the local Occupy movement arrived to show their support for the protests. They plan to blockade the financial district on October 1, a holiday, hoping it will escalate into one of most disruptive protests in Hong Kong for decades.

The clashes were the most heated so far in a series of anti-Beijing protests. Police arrested six people overnight, including teenage student leader Joshua Wong, who was dragged away by police, kicking, screaming and bleeding from his arm, after he called on the protesters to charge the government premises.

"Hong Kong's future belongs to you, you and you," Wong, a thin 17-year-old with dark-rimmed glasses and bowl-cut hair, told cheering supporters before he was taken away.

"I want to tell C.Y. Leung and Xi Jinping that the mission of fighting for universal suffrage does not rest upon the young people, it is everyone's responsibility," he shouted, referring to Hong Kong's and China's leaders.

"I don't want the fight for democracy to be passed down to the next generation. This is our responsibility."

The protest came after more than 1,000 school pupils rallied peacefully to support university students demanding democracy, capping the week-long campaign that has seen classroom strikes and a large cut-out paraded in public depicting the city's leader Leung as the devil.

MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia's chief medical officer is placing herself under quarantine for 21 days after her office assistant died of Ebola.

Bernice Dahn, a deputy health minister who has represented Liberia at regional conferences intended to combat the ongoing epidemic, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she did not have any Ebola symptoms but wanted to ensure she was not infected.

The World Health Organisation says 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola, which has killed more than 3,000 people across West Africa and is hitting Liberia especially hard. WHO figures released Friday said 150 people died in the country in just two days.

Liberia's government has asked people to keep themselves isolated for 21 days if they think they have been exposed. The unprecedented scale of the outbreak, however, has made it difficult to trace the contacts of victims and quarantine those who might be at risk.

"Of course we made the rule, so I am home for 21 days," Dahn said Saturday. "I did it on my own. I told my office staff to stay at home for the 21 days. That's what we need to do."

Health officials, especially frontline doctors and nurses, are particularly vulnerable to Ebola, which is spread via the body fluids of infected patients. Earlier this month, WHO said more than 300 healthworkers had contracted Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most-affected countries. Nearly half of them had died.

Making sure healthcare workers have the necessary supplies, including personal protective equipment, has been a challenge especially given that many flights in and out of Ebola-affected countries have been canceled.

At an emergency meeting of the African Union on September 8, regional travel hub Senegal said it was planning to open a "humanitarian corridor" to affected countries.

Senegal was expected on Saturday to receive a flight carrying humanitarian staff from Guinea — the first time aid workers from one of the three most-affected countries were allowed in Senegal since the corridor was opened, said Alexis Masciarelli, spokesman for the World Food Programme.

The airport in Dakar, Senegal's capital, has set up a terminal specifically for humanitarian flights where thorough health checks will be conducted, Masciarelli said.

The current plan calls for two weekly rotations between Dakar and Ebola-affected countries and a third weekly rotation between Dakar and Accra, Ghana, where a special UN mission to fight Ebola will be headquartered, Masciarelli said.

Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, African Union commissioner for social affairs, said Saturday he plans to travel to West Africa Sunday to meet regional leaders and airline executives to try to convince them to resume flights cancelled because of Ebola.

The first batch of an AU Ebola task force, totalling 30 people, left for Liberia on September 18, Kaloko said. Task force members are expected to arrive in Sierra Leone on October 5 and in Guinea by the end of October, he said.

GENEVA/FREETOWN — The spread of Ebola seems to have stabilised in Guinea, one of three West African states worst-hit by the disease, but a lack of beds and resistance in affected communities means its advance continues elsewhere, the World Health Organisation said.

Underscoring drastic measures being taken to halt the worst outbreak on record of the deadly virus, Sierra Leone put three more districts — home to over a million people and major mining operations — under indefinite quarantine.

An outbreak that began in a remote corner of Guinea has taken hold of much of neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing nearly 3,000 people in just over six months. Senegal and Nigeria have recorded cases but, for now, contained them.

World leaders and international organisations have warned of a crisis threatening the stability and economies of a string of fragile West African states. But they have also been criticised for doing too little too late.

"The upward epidemic trend continues in Sierra Leone and most probably also in Liberia," the WHO said in its latest update on the disease, which has killed about half of those confirmed and suspected to have been infected.

"However, the situation in Guinea, although still of grave concern, appears to have stabilised: between 75 and 100 new confirmed cases have been reported in each of the past five weeks," it added.

Experts are trying to straighten out data from the ground, where already weak local health systems over been overrun by one of the world's deadliest diseases, muddying information on the current situation.

But most warn that the number of cases recorded so far represents a fraction of the real total, with many victims unable find places to get treated or unwilling to come forward due to fears over the disease.

WHO said earlier this week that the total number of infections could reach 20,000 by November, months earlier than previously forecast. US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January if nothing was done.

Difficulties of isolation

Overnight, Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the districts of Port Loko and Bombali in the north and Moyamba in the south would be quarantined.

The step means five of the country's 14 districts are now isolated. The districts of Kailahum and Kenema, in the northeast close to Guinea and Liberia, were already quarantined.

"The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulties for our people in those districts," Koroma said. "[But] the life of everyone and the survival of our country take precedence over these difficulties."

The extension of the quarantine follows a nationwide lockdown at the weekend that Koroma said had been a success but exposed "areas of greater challenges", including the need to rapidly build more treatment centres.

Under the new measures, people will be able to travel through quarantined districts during daylight hours so long as they do not stop. The World Food Programme is meant to provide food to residents living there.

The Ebola outbreak comes a decade into Sierra Leone and Liberia's recovery from intertwined civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1990s.

In this time, both nations have secured billions of dollars in investment, especially from mining firms looking to tap into their vast iron ore reserves.

However, firms operating in the region have appealed to world leaders to do more to fight the outbreak, which they said threatened the region's stability. Border closures and travel bans have hamstrung trade as well as the aid response.

Sierra Leone's new restrictions are likely to hit mining firms. Port Loko is home to London Mining's concession and African Minerals has its rail and port services there.

Axel Addy, Liberia's minister for commerce and industry, said his nation had secured imports of basic food staples until December, but the blow to its mining sector may trigger a recession next year.

Screening outsiders

Having spread slowly at first, a spike in Ebola cases and warnings of exponential spread in recent weeks spooked international leaders into greater pledges of action. The response is slowly picking up momentum.

Governments and organisations from across the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Cuba, have pledged military and civilian personnel alongside cash and medical supplies. But aid workers say it is still not enough.

The WHO said Liberia had 315 bed spaces for Ebola patients and aid agencies have promised to set up 440 more, but the country needs a further 1,550 beds that nobody has yet offered to provide. In Sierra Leone, 297 planned new beds would almost double existing capacity, but a further 532 were needed.

The lack of beds means those infected with Ebola are still being turned away from hospitals and must be cared for at home, where they risk infecting yet more people.

As a result, part of the aid response is now focusing on setting up care centres in communities and training locals, including 11,000 teachers in Liberia, to educate people about how to combat the disease.

The first 9,000 of a planned 50,000 kits — containing protective gowns, gloves and masks for family members to look after Ebola sufferers — arrived in Liberia, according to UNICEF.

However, WHO said these efforts were still being resisted in neglected, remote communities with a distrust of outsiders, like the one where eight members of an Ebola team were killed in a attack in southeast Guinea last week.

"There are reports from Fassankoni, Guinea, that communities have set up roadblocks to screen entering response teams."