China Protesters Attack US Embassy
Saturday May 8 9:28 AM ET
By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press Writer
BEIJING (AP) - More than a thousand demonstrators attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beijing with rocks, smashed up embassy cars and scuffled with hundreds of police officers today in a protest over the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
Police pushed back demonstrators who tried to ram a van and hurl a burning American flag through the embassy gate. Protesters used pieces of concrete that had been left in piles by workers rebuilding sidewalks to break many of the windows in embassy buildings spread over one block.
A group of protesters tried to set a car on fire and started shoving police who stopped them. Several cars were smashed with chunks of concrete.
The street was littered with at least four trashed cars and paving stones and rocks. Police stood in lines around the protesters in front of the embassy and forced part of the crowd to leave.
The protest was more destructive and tense than one by several thousand university students who arrived at the embassy by bicycle and rented buses earlier today.
The students marched in groups from Beijing universities to the embassy gate, where they shouted anti-American slogans and read angry protest statements. Some pelted the embassy buildings with eggs, rocks and plastic water bottles.
The demonstrators said they thought NATO intentionally targeted the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. In Brussels, Belgium, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said NATO forces mistakenly hit the embassy with ''precision guided munitions.''
The nearly three-hour protest seemed to end at dusk when demonstrators dispersed. But a crowd of mostly men gathered after dark. The crowd made room for them to hurl the pieces of pavement at the buildings.
The protest was the first large one by students since the democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square that were crushed by the military on June 4, 1989.
The communist government generally bans protests. But officials apparently felt that stopping people from publicly expressing outrage over the embassy bombing could further inflame them and possibly turn emotions against the government.
In a sign that today's protest was officially sanctioned, state-run television showed student demonstrators marching and shouting slogans, but did not report the pelting of the embassy.
The Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador James Sasser and lodged ''the strongest protest against the U.S.-led NATO attack,'' the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
At least three people were killed and more than 20 were injured when NATO missiles struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Xinhua said. One person was missing. A Xinhua reporter, Shao Yunhuan, was among the dead, it said.
Beijing has sided with the Serbs and strongly opposed the NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia since they started.
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