HONG KONG • Hong Kong police defused two homemade bombs at a local Catholic school, in a reminder of the potential for escalation in the restive financial centre after a lull in protest violence.
The police dismantled two improvised explosive devices on Monday evening at Wah Yan College in Wan Chai, bomb disposal officer Alick McWhirter told a news briefing on Monday.
The radio-controlled bombs were complete, fully functional and ready to be activated by mobile phone, he said, adding that the bombs appeared intended "to kill and to maim people".
"Given the quantities of the explosive and the fragmentation, had these devices been placed and had they functioned, they would have killed and injured large numbers of people," Mr McWhirter said.
The two devices contained a total of about 10kg of high explosives, fragmentation material and shrapnel. Yesterday, the police said they had no suspects so far and no further updates.
The bombs were discovered on a portion of Wah Yan property that was outside the gates and accessible to the public, the school said in a statement.
The bomb scare comes after pro-democracy demonstrators held their largest march in months on Sunday, which, although largely peaceful, signalled that Hong Kong's unrest would likely continue into the new year.
The former British colony has been gripped by six months of protests, which have often featured pitched battles between riot police and demonstrators hurling bricks and petrol bombs.
Hong Kong's embattled Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam, mentioned the "highly destructive" explosive devices in a regular briefing yesterday.
She said it was worrying that 40 per cent of the roughly 6,000 people arrested during the political turmoil have been students, and that teachers have been among them.
"When violent acts enter schools, it will undermine the safety of all students and their parents," Mrs Lam said, adding that she would head to Beijing on Saturday for annual meetings to update Chinese officials on the situation in Hong Kong.
While she has withdrawn extradition legislation that sparked the historically large protests in June, she reiterated her opposition yesterday to meeting other protester demands, including restarting stalled electoral reforms.
Meanwhile, her government has failed to convince the Court of Appeal of the need to reinstate a ban against protesters wearing masks before hearings on the case proceed on Jan 9 and 10.
The court yesterday rejected the government's request to temporarily extend the controversial mask ban, despite China's criticism of a lower court decision declaring the measure unconstitutional last month.
BLOOMBERG
