The United States intel has said China is moving troops to Hong Kong border, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday. Taking to Twitter, Trump said, "Our Intelligence has informed us that the Chinese Government is moving troops to the Border with Hong Kong. Everyone should be calm and safe."
According to some media reports, clashes broke out between police and protesters at the Hong Kong airport late Tuesday after the demonstrators had shut down operations at one of the world's busiest transport hubs for two straight days.
Officers armed with pepper spray and swinging batons confronted the protesters who used luggage carts to barricade entrances to the airport terminal.
Police took several people into a police van waiting at the entrance to the airport's arrivals hall. Police said they tried to help ambulance officers reach an injured man whom protesters had detained on suspicion of being an undercover agent.
All scheduled flights not already checked in were cancelled and protesters were also blocking the departure lines at immigration, so nobody was able to get through there -- something the protesters hadn't done previously, media reports said.
More than 200 flights were cancelled Monday and the airport was effectively shut down with no flights taking off or landing. Passengers have been forced to stay in the city while airlines struggle to find other ways to get them to their destinations.
The airport disruptions are an escalation of a summer of demonstrations aimed at what many Hong Kong residents see as an increasing erosion of the freedoms they were promised in 1997 when Communist Party-ruled mainland China took over what had been a British colony.
The protests have built on an opposition movement that shut down much of the city for seven weeks in 2014 before it eventually fizzled and its leaders were jailed on public disturbance charges.
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