Chaos ensued in Hong Kong for the 15th consecutive weekend as riots broke out all over the Asian financial hub. Tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets defying the police ban to call for a democracy.

They surrounded the government complex, the Legislative Council building in central Hong Kong, to hurl rocks and molotov cocktails at it.

The unauthorised march began from Causeway Bay and splintered off into several group across the territory. Due to the lack of an official permit, the assembly was deemed unauthorised by the riot police and prompted them to respond with multiple rounds of teargas and water cannons that covered the demonstrators in blue dye to help identify them for arrests later.

Fights broke out between the anti-government and pro-Beijing demonstrators in several residential areas like Fortress Hill and North Point too.

As the riot police tried to break up these fights, violence escalated and the residents grew even more hostile towards the authorities. Several residents jeered and yelled furiously at the riots police.

One of the worst incident of this crowd driven violence occurred in Tin Hau where a group of protesters continuously beat up a man. The identity of the man or the reason why he was beat up is still not known.

It seems like that the demographics of the protestors have expanded over the past few weeks. Unlike the usual young, masked protesters who broke into the Admiralty station earlier this week, the protestors clashing with the police on Hennessy Road on Sunday consisted of middle aged men in their T-shirts and flip flops without any kind of facial protection.

Although the protests had started out peacefully they took a turn for a face-off between the police and the protestors ending in the arrests of hundreds of people.

In the wake of the protests, Hong Kong’s subway operator MTR is shutting train stations. Due to the vandalism in Admiralty station earlier this week and the recent attempts of the protestors to break into Wan Chai and Causeway Bay station, the Hong Kong Island line will no longer stop at these stations.

Many of demonstrators on Sunday set a fire outside a metro station and smashed the windows and glass displays.As more time elapses it is becoming sufficiently evident that the demands of the protesters have taken up a new meaning in the past few months. The protestors are no longer just targeting the extradition bill that had earlier triggered the resistance against the Chinese Communist Party.