MONDAY, AUGUST 26 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

[email protected]

Timothy McLaughlin contributed to

this report.

on Saturday urged protesters

to “sit down and talk” and aims to

establish dialogue with the city’s

young people.

and to win democracy for the city

in the face of an assertive, intoler-

ant Beijing.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam

accused the transit authority of

facilitating the protests and called

it an “accomplice to rioters.”

In a service announcement

Sunday, MTR called the closure

a “prudent measure” to “ensure

the safety of passengers and our

staff.”

Police on Saturday arrested 29

people, ages 17 to 52, “for offences

including unlawful assembly, pos-

session of offensive weapon and

assaulting police officers,” the

force said in a statement.

There were no immediate re-

ports of arrests on Sunday, though

riot police were seen pinning

down and handcuffing protesters

in Tseun Wan.

The latest arrests mean that

almost 800 people have been de-

tained during the demonstra-

tions, which started in early June

over a now-suspended bill that

would have allowed extraditions

to China.

The bill is no longer the protest-

ers’ main concern. Instead, they

say, they are fighting primarily to

keep Hong Kong’s special status

tear gas and deployed water can-

nons acquired last year. They

turned the cannons briefly against

protesters, sending a group re-

treating into a nearby mall.

“I do worry about [the water

cannons]” said one 25-year-old

protester, who spoke on the condi-

tion of anonymity, citing fear of

arrest. “And I can see lots of people

on the scene; they do share the

same fear with me.”

He added that front-line dem-

onstrators like him are “still learn-

ing” and had to be a bit “conserva-

tive” in dealing with the water

cannons, which they saw for the

first time on Sunday.

“Maybe we retreat first and try

to figure out how to tackle it later,”

he said.

Rights groups have warned that

water cannons are “inherently in-

discriminate,” especially in Hong

Kong’s crowded streets and resi-

dential neighborhoods. But secu-

rity analysts say the risk of collat-

eral damage is lower than with

tear gas, which has filled neigh-

borhoods repeatedly over the past

weeks and seeped into apart-

ments.

Authorities closed subway

stops in and around neighbor-

hoods where protests were

planned, a move widely seen as an

effort to limit participation. The

MTR Corp., which runs the sub-

way, has come under fire from

Chinese state media, which has

BY SHIBANI MAHTANI

hong kong — Police turned
water cannons against demon-
strators on Sunday for the first
time in months, as a protest de-
scended into a street battle that
left a main thoroughfare littered
with bricks and empty canisters of
tear gas.
Violence returned to Hong
Kong streets over the weekend
after a period of relative calm,
marked by huge yet peaceful pro-
tests. The demonstrations, now in
their 12th weekend, are having a
significant impact on the financial
hub — hurting multinational cor-
porations, deeply unsettling resi-
dents, prompting changes in dip-
lomatic procedures and raising
increasingly urgent questions
about how this upheaval will end.
Sunday’s authorized march in
Tseun Wan, in the western part of
the New Territories area that bor-
ders China, turned rowdy as pro-
testers blocked streets and built
barriers to hold back police.
A police officer fired a warning
shot into the air from his revolver
after protesters armed with metal
rods tried to charge at the officers.
Riot police announced they
would begin a dispersal operation,
an emerging tactic as authorities
grow less tolerant of the dissent
that continues to grip the city.
Bricks were thrown at police,
who responded with rounds of

BY LIZ SLY

AND JAMES MCAULEY

beirut — Attacks against Irani-
an-allied forces in three coun-
tries, all blamed on Israel, escalat-
ed tensions across the Middle
East on Sunday, drawing threats
of retaliation and intensifying
fears that a bigger conflict could
erupt.
The attacks Saturday and Sun-
day targeted Iranian forces and
their proxies in Lebanon, Syria
and Iraq, in what appeared to be a
significant escalation of Israeli
efforts to contain the expansion of
Iranian influence in the region
that could jeopardize the contin-
ued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq
and draw Lebanon into a new war.
All of the attacks were shroud-
ed in the mystery that engulfs
much of the shadowy conflict be-
tween Israel and Iran. Israel con-
firmed that it was responsible
only for the first attack, in which
its warplanes struck overnight
Saturday on what military offi-
cials said was an Iranian-operat-
ed base in Syria preparing to
launch a major drone attack
against Israel. At least two mem-
bers of the Lebanese Hezbollah
militia were killed, Hezbollah
said.
Hours later, a drone armed
with explosives hit a building
housing a Hezbollah media center
in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Hezbollah accused Israel in what
would be the first Israeli attack in
Lebanon since the 2006 war and
said it would respond by shooting
down Israeli drones in Lebanon.
Israel did not confirm or deny
responsibility.
Later Sunday a commander
with an Iranian-backed militia in
Iraq was killed by a drone strike in
the western Iraqi town of al-
Qaim, compounding tensions
raised by a recent series of strikes
apparently conducted by Israel
against Iranian-backed militias in
Iraq.
Any one of these incidents
would have marked an escalation
in a steadily intensifying confron-
tation between Israel and the Ira-
nian-backed militias that have ex-
panded their reach across the
Middle East in recent years. Taken
together, they signal a “new era”
in Israel’s attempt to roll back
Iran’s presence in the region, said
Hilal Khashan, a professor of po-
litical science at the American
University of Beirut.
“The Israelis are telling every-
one that they are expanding the
scope of their attacks against Iran
and its allies,” Khashan said. “The
fact that these attacks occurred
ushers in a new stage in the con-
frontation between Israel on the
one hand and Iran and its allies on
the other.”
In an angry speech on Sunday
night, Hezbollah leader Hasan
Nasrallah called the drone strike
on the media center “a very, very
dangerous violation” and said
Hezbollah would strike back from
Lebanon in retaliation for that
attack in Beirut and the deaths of
Hezbollah members in Syria.

Hezbollah will also try to down

any of the Israeli drones that rou-

tinely fly over Lebanon, he said.

He warned Israelis living in

northern Israel to brace for Hez-

bollah attacks on Israeli territory.

The Israeli claims suggested

Iran already might be contem-

plating retaliation for recent at-

tacks on weapons storage facili-

ties in Iraq.

The Israeli strikes overnight

Saturday targeted the town of

Aqraba, southeast of Damascus,

where the Israeli Defense Forces

said the Iranian Quds Force and

allied militias were readying a

“large-scale attack of multiple

killer drones on Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-

tanyahu hailed what he called “a

major operational effort.”

“Iran has no immunity any-

where,” he tweeted. “If someone

rises up to kill you, kill him first.”

Israel has struck hundreds of

targets in Syria over the past sev-

en years, most of them Iranian

forces or Iran’s efforts to deliver

sophisticated weaponry to Hez-

bollah in Lebanon via Syria.

This is the first time, however,

that Israel has accused Iran of

attempting such a large-scale at-

tack on Israeli territory. Had such

an attack taken place, it could

have triggered an all-out war.

It was impossible to confirm

whether such an attack was

planned. Iran’s Islamic Revolu-

tionary Guard Corps, which com-

mands the Quds Force, denied

that any Iranian targets had been

struck in Syria.

Israel placed its military on

high alert against possible retalia-

tion, a military spokesman said.

Over the past month, Israel has

expanded its strikes to Iraq, hit-

ting four Iranian-backed militia

bases where weapons were being

stored in what are suspected to be

drone strikes. Officially, Israel has

only hinted that it was responsi-

ble, but U.S. and Israeli officials

have told news outlets that Israel

did carry out the attacks, Israel’s

first on Iraq since 1981.

The killing later Sunday of a

commander with Kataeb Hezbol-

lah, one of Iran’s staunchest allies

in Iraq, was also a first. The drone

strike in the western Iraqi town of

al-Qaim was instantly blamed on

Israel and prompted a call from

one of the most powerful blocs in

the Iraqi parliament for U.S.

troops to withdraw from Iraq.

The killing “represents a dan-

gerous turning point,” the Iran-al-

lied Fatah coalition said in a state-

ment. The coalition cited wide-

spread suspicions in Iraq that the

United States is aiding the Israeli

attacks and said it believes “there

is no need for the American pres-

ence.”

An Israeli spokesman did not

confirm or deny responsibility.

The U.S. military has responded

to allegations of involvement by

pointing out that it is in Iraq at the

invitation of the Iraqi govern-

ment and only to fight the Islamic

State terrorist group.

Israel also declined to confirm

or deny that it was behind the

blast at a Hezbollah office in Bei-

rut.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Mustafa Salim in Baghdad and Suzan

Haidamous in Beirut contributed to

this report.

Strikes on Iran-backed

forces raise tensions

Hong Kong police use water cannons

ANN WANG/REUTERS

Protesters take cover from tear gas in a clash with police in Tseun Wan, where bricks were thrown at

officers. Police also used water cannons for the first time in months after a period of relative calm.

Israel confirms attack in

Syria and is blamed for

others in Lebanon, Iraq

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