By CHRIS BUCKLEY and ALAN WONG SEPT. 26, 2014
HONG KONG — Student protests demanding democratic elections in Hong Kong ended in rowdy confrontation and arrests on Friday, when the police moved in with pepper spray against demonstrators who had stormed a square near the government headquarters.
The strife was a taste of what could follow a planned sit-in protest in Hong Kong’s main financial district, which a leader of the city’s democracy movement said was likely to take place next week.
Overnight and into Saturday morning, the confrontation spilled onto the streets around the government offices. Hundreds of young protesters faced phalanxes of police officers with shields whose warnings to disperse went unheeded.
The nighttime standoff between hundreds of demonstrators and the well-prepared police force came at the end of a week of peaceful student protests over Beijing’s limited proposals for electoral change, released last month.