(18 Feb 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4366797

Authorities in Canada are pushing back and arresting protesters who have paralyzed traffic in Ottawa for three weeks in a demonstration against the country's COVID-19 restrictions.
"Looks like right now they've got a perimeter around the what would be considered the red zone so that all the exits and entrances, they have barricades... armed police, armored trucks," Brody Roberts said as he described the scene. Roberts, 25, came from the Niagara Falls region of Ontario to join the protests over Canada's COVID-19 mandates.
Scuffles broke out in front of a downtown hotel. Police have not yet said how many have been arrested. Hundreds of officers descended on the heart of the protest hours after police led some demonstrators away in handcuffs.
Dan Holland's car was blocked in by the police. He decided to leave it behind as he departed the protest area.
"I know how to pick up a car from a tow yard... these guys are the biggest threat to everyone's safety around here, so getting away from them is the biggest thing," Holland said.
Police have sealed off much of the downtown area to outsiders. The protesters in the capital make up the movement's last stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shutdown border crossings into the U.S. and caused immense economic harm.   
The crackdown on the self-styled Freedom Convoy began in the morning, when hundreds of police, some in riot gear and some carrying automatic weapons, descended into the protest zone and began leading demonstrators away in handcuffs through the snowy streets as holdout truckers blared their horns.
Tow truck operators - wearing neon-green ski masks, with their companies’ decals taped over on their trucks to conceal their identities - arrived under police escort and started removing the hundreds of big rigs, campers and other vehicles parked shoulder to shoulder near Parliament.
Some trucks were seen being driven away from the  protest site.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives ​​
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/85013ff5f0bb4af59da86a44fd1b3098