Hong Kong’s embattled leader Leung Chun-ying yesterday vowed to stay in office, warning students demanding his resignation that their pro-democracy movement was out of control.

Passionate, student-led protests for democratic reforms over the past week in Hong Kong subsided today as many residents returned to work.

In an apparent concession to authorities warning pro-democracy protesters to clear Hong Kong’s streets by the beginning of the work week, students occupying the area outside city government headquarters agreed yesterday to remove some barricades that have blocked the building’s entrance during the week-long demonstrations.

Pro-democracy protesters have been defiant in the face of attacks by opponents and warnings by the Hong Kong government to clear the streets, staging a massive rally in the downtown business district they have occupied for a week.

Clashes have broken out at the site of one of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests as local residents and pro-Beijing supporters tried to evict activists from the street they are occupying.

Chinese state media has indicated that the central government may be losing patience with the protests, and urged support for decisive action to end them.

Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have escalated, a day after demonstrators upset over Beijing’s decision to limit political reforms defied onslaughts of tear gas and appeals from the territory’s top leader to go home.

Two suspects hurled a corrosive liquid at two pedestrians in a crowded Hong Kong shopping district, also injuring nine others, in the fourth acid attack in the same neighbourhood in a year.

A bottle of acid thrown into a crowd in one of Hong Kong’s most densely populated shopping districts injured 24 pedestrians, police said today, the third in a series of attacks that have injured nearly 100 people.