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Hong Kong civilians step in to save students trapped in violent protests

Thousands of civilians clashed with police on the streets of Hong Kong overnight in an attempt to free hundreds of student activists cornered by authorities in a university campus for nearly a week.

Dramatic footage shared online showed demonstrators bravely rushing to breach a police line around Hong Kong Polytechnic University on Sunday night but were met with a hail of water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

The pro-democracy students have barricaded themselves inside the campus for the past week amid escalating violence and face up to a decade in prison, the Guardian reported. Food is running out and repeated attempts to escape have been foiled by riot police who have fired teargas at the students and threatened to use live bullets.

In an attempt to end the standoff, protesters took to the the streets of downtown Hong Kong to save their “brothers” — building bamboo scaffolding to hold back police vehicles and hurling Molotov cocktails at officers, Reuters reported.

Other people volunteered their motorcycles — driving up to a footbridge where students bravely rappelled down using rope and sped away before cops closed the route.

In a video circulating online, school board member Owan Li called the situation at Polytechnic University a “humanitarian crisis” and said dozens of students were suffering from hypothermia after being blasted by water cannons.

The financial center has been rocked for the past five months by anti-government protests, crippling the semi-autonomous region whose citizens are upset with what they say is Chinese influence in its politics.

The protests started peacefully in early June, sparked by proposed legislation that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to the mainland. But by the time the bill was withdrawn, the protests had hardened and broadened into a resistance movement against the territory’s government and Beijing.

So far, more than 4,000 people have been arrested in the riots while hundreds of others have been injured.

With Post wires