Philippine police van rams protesters in front of US Embassy

Television news footage showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after activists surrounded and started hitting it with the wooden batons they seized from police.

Police lobbed tear gas and arrested at least 29 protesters who broke through a line of riot police and hurled red paint at the officers and a U.S. government seal at the start of the rally at the seaside embassy compound.

The protesters, consisting of students, workers and tribespeople, were demanding an end to the presence of visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines and to support a call by President Rodrigo Duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the U.S., the country’s longtime treaty ally.