Police on Thursday moved in on the Admiralty protest site from all sides, clearing away tents and repeating their ultimatum to protesters remaining at the scene.

Authorities had announced they would lock down the site if the hard core of remaining protesters had not left their camp after a final 30-minute deadline.

"After this half-an-hour police will lock down the occupied area and set up a police cordon area... If anyone refuses to leave police will take action to disperse or arrest," the AFP news agency reported senior police officer Kwok Pak-chung as saying.

Some 400 demonstrators had watched at the Admiralty site as workers, guarded by police, dismantled barricades around the protesters' camp. Television footage showed railings stands being removed piece by piece. Most of the officers present wore normal uniforms in contrast with previous days, when police with pepper spray and batons were dressed in riot gear.

The final warning came as police sought to enforce a December 9 injunction demanding that the site be vacated.

For 75 days, protesters have been demonstrating for free and fair 2017 elections for the semi-autonomous region, without interference from mainland China. In late August, the Beijing government announced that candidates for the leadership elections would first have to be vetted by a loyalist committee.

'We'll be back'

At their height, the rallies drew tens of thousands of people, but numbers have dwindled to just hundreds in recent weeks.

On what looked to be the final night of protests, chants of "I want real suffrage" could be heard among demonstrators, with some leaving messages in chalk on the asphalt that read: "We will be back."

The mainly peaceful protests in the Chinese-controlled city have represented one of the most serious challenges to Beijing's authority since the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations and bloody crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square.

rc/shs (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)