Masked protesters smashed windows of a bank branch and other
buildings, including a Starbucks coffee shop, and set a police car ablaze. Two
media trucks were also damaged.
An Emergency Services spokeswoman said at least three people
had been wounded in the protest, but that paramedics were unable to reach them
due to the protest.
By midafternoon, demonstrators numbered in the thousands,
while hundreds of police massed and authorities shut down public transit and
blocked streets leading into the downtown core of the city.
Most protesters remained peaceful, with many bearing signs
and chanting slogans aimed both at the G20 and police tactics.
"Whose streets, our streets," roared the crowd,
while TV images focused on "anarchists" who had promised to
infiltrate the crowd and face off against police at the 10-foot (3-meter) high
barrier that encircles the Group of 20 meeting site.
Soon after the demonstrators arrived near the G20 barriers,
groups of black-clad protesters appeared to separate themselves from the larger
group and confronted the hundreds of police shadowing the march.
TV reports said protesters at the front of the march were
hurling objects such as golf balls at police.
A Reuters reporter earlier witnessed some demonstrators
chipping pieces off concrete planters lining the path of the march before
scuffles between the two sides. Police used plastic shields to shove
demonstrators back into the crowds.
Anti-G20 groups have been demonstrating in Toronto all week
before the summit of rich and emerging economies, which follows a smaller
meeting of Group of Eight industrial nations in the Ontario resort town of
Huntsville.
Canada has budgeted more than C$1 billion ($970 million) for
security for the two summits.
Police earlier this week arrested a man and a woman a few
blocks from the summit site and said they had found incendiary devices.
Overnight, police conducted raids on houses of suspected
protest organizers in Toronto and arrested four people on charges of conspiracy
to commit mischief, in what police said was a protest-related move.
