Hong Kong protests live: Watch movements on the ground following police crackdown

Watch footage from today's protests in Hong Kong, where a video showing the apparent beating of a defenceless protester outside a government building has led human rights activists, politicians and movement leaders to condemn the police’s most brutal crackdown for a week.

The operation was the toughest against largely student protesters in over a week, and came just hours after demonstrators swarmed into a tunnel on a four-lane thoroughfare on Tuesday, halting traffic and chanting for universal suffrage.

Protesters want China’s government to drop plans for a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates in elections. They also demand Hong Kong’s deeply unpopular Beijing-backed leader, Mr Leung, resign.

Organisers say as many as 200,000 people filled Hong Kong's streets at the peak of the protests, however, numbers have since fallen and the remaining demonstrators have braced for possible further police moves to clear out their protest camps.

At least 45 people were arrested today as officers resorted to brute force to clear a main road in Hong Kong.

Beijing is keen to end the protests to avoid emboldening activists and others on the mainland seen as a threat to the ruling Communist Party.