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White men attacked pro-democracy protesters after the demonstration on Sunday, July 22, 2019 near Hong Kong. REUTERS / Tyrone Siu

Hong Kong executive director Carrie Lam on Monday strongly condemned what she described as an " attack " against the Chinese Liaison Office in the city on Sunday on the sidelines of another major protest. She also found "shocking" Sunday's attack by gangs against protesters.

With our correspondent in Hong Kong, Florence de Changy

On Monday, Carrie Lam offered her condolences but made no significant announcement. Nor did she question the attitude of the police when the population is truly shocked after attacks by triad members.

The masked men, mostly in white T-shirts, hit all subway passengers in Yuen Long, a city far away from Hong Kong Island, accusing them of returning from the opposition march to the government .

The pro-Beijing camp strongly suspected

There would be dozens of wounded, one person between life and death, and a pregnant woman would have lost her baby. But the police played a very ambiguous role. It took a very long time to respond, did not respond to emergency calls and even closed its local offices to people who came to complain.

HK: Triads attack the protesters. When the mafias choose to defend the authorities, what does it say about the authorities? https://t.co/ELR2OcgnIq

Simon Leplâtre (@SLeplatre) July 21, 2019

Another aggravating factor, a pro-Beijing camp deputy, Junius Ho, was seen and filmed shaking hands with all these gang members and slapping their shoulders with their thumbs up after the confrontations. This seems to confirm that this violence was sponsored by some members of the pro-Beijing camp.

►To read too: Hong Kong : a new event in a tense context

For Jean-Philippe Beja, director of research at the CNRS, these gangs are very close to China: " Of course, we have no certainty since they were masked. But we have already seen in the past people who are more or less related to the triads, that is, to the secret societies of Hong Kong, [themselves] linked to the Liaison Office of the People's Republic of China, come attack the protesters. It happened during the " umbrella movement " in 2014. The triad people had already been attacked by protesters who were demanding the election by universal suffrage. "