LONDON, England - University students smashed their way into British Prime Minister David Cameron's party headquarters on Wednesday during a chaotic protest against the government's plans to triple tuition fees.Thousands of demonstrators besieged 30 Millbank, running riot through the 1960s office building near parliament, which houses the Conservative Party.
Source: AFP
Vastly outnumbered, police were powerless to stop the protesters smashing their way through the entire three-sided glass frontage, storming in and wrecking the lobby.- Running amok, several activists reached the roof of the six-storey riverside block and hurled a fire extingusher at police below as students crammed into the courtyard, torching a bonfire of placards and surging forward.
- One woman police officer was seen being led away from the scene with blood on her face.
- Fourteen people were injured, including seven police officers, a police spokesman said. Thirty-two people were arrested for offences including criminal damage and trespass.
- Students were marching through London in protest at the university tuition fee proposals Conservatives-Liberal Democrat coalition government, which came to power in May.
- Police put the number of demonstrators at 20,000, while organisers said it was nearer to 50,000.
- Facing suggestions that officers had lost control of the situation, London's police chief Paul Stephenson promised a full investigation.
- When riot police finally regained control of the building and forcing students back, the scale of the devastation inside was clear.
- The lobby was covered in shattered glass, debris and placard sticks, with the desks ransacked, ceiling air vents ripped down and offensive graffiti spray-painted on the marble walls.
- A student from Buckinghamshire New University, who declined to be named, told AFP as he ran from the building with the shell of a television monitor: "It's like a raid in there.
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