Secondary school pupils arrested over alleged Hong Kong terror plot

Nine people including six secondary school pupils have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity, with police claiming to have uncovered an attempt to make explosives and plant bombs across the city. Picture: Kin Cheung/AP

Nine people including six secondary school pupils have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity, with police claiming to have uncovered an attempt to make explosives and plant bombs across the city.

The group of pupils were attempting to make the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP) in a homemade laboratory in a hostel, police said.

They planned to use TATP to bomb courts as well as cross-harbour tunnels and railways, and even planned to put some of these explosives in trash bins on the street “to maximise damage caused to the society,” police said.

The nine arrested are five men and four women between 15 and 39 years old, according to senior superintendent Li Kwai-wah of the Hong Kong Police National Security Department.

Authorities said they seized apparatus and raw materials used to make the TATP, as well as a “trace amount” of the explosive.

The arrests come two years after months of massive anti-government protests rocked the city. Last week, a Hong Kong man stabbed a police officer with a knife, before killing himself.