The Latest: Police negotiators seek to end HK campus siege

HONG KONG (AP) — The Latest on local elections that took place amid the ongoing protests in Hong Kong (all times local):

7:10 p.m.

Hong Kong police are planning to send a team of negotiators into a university campus to coax a small group of protesters entrapped inside for over a week to surrender.

The move came after pro-democracy politicians, who won a landslide victory in Sunday’s district council elections, called for an end to the police siege at the Polytechnic University to let the protesters leave.

Some 1,100 protesters have surrendered after occupying the campus following intense clashes with police, but around 30 others are believed to still be hiding in the vast campus to avoid arrest.

District police officer Ho Yun-sing said Monday that a team of police negotiators, medical workers and independent mediators will enter the campus to find the holdouts amid concerns over their health and mental condition.

He said the aim is to persuade the protesters to leave, and not to arrest them.

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4:20 p.m.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition has won a landslide victory in local elections in a clear rebuke to city leader Carrie Lam over her handling of violent protests that have divided the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Wu Chi-wai, leader of the city’s biggest pro-democracy party, said Monday that the bloc won nearly 90 percent of 452 district council seats, which will help them take unprecedented control of 17 out of 18 district councils.

The result of Sunday’s elections could force the central government in Beijing to rethink how to handle the unrest, which is now in its sixth month. The district councils have little power, but the vote became a referendum on public support for the protests.

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