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AFP
LOS ANGELES
PROTESTERS opposed to Donald Trump hurled rocks and bottles outside a rally he spoke at in New Mexico on Tuesday, the same day the bombastic billionaire won the Republican presidential primary in Washington state.
The victory brings Trump, the last Republican standing in the 2016 US presidential race, one major step closer toward clinching his party's nomination.
But the success was overshadowed by violent anti-Trump demonstrations in Albuquerque, in the southwestern state of New Mexico.
Chaos erupted outside a Trump rally when protesters burst through metal barriers and tried to storm the city convention center, where the provocative Republican was speaking.
The crowd threw burning T-shirts, bottles and rocks at police, while police on horseback and officers wielding clubs used pepper spray and smoke grenades to try to disperse the crowd.
"Several #APB officers are being treated for injuries as a result of being hit by rocks. At least one subject arrested from the riot," Albuquerque police said via Twitter on early Wednesday.
The protesters, several of whom waved Mexican flags, chanted expletives about Trump. Some also waved signs with expletive-laden anti-Trump slogans in Spanish.
Most of the protesters left before midnight, police said.
Trump has proposed building a wall on the Mexican border, suggested that Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug dealers, and urged the deportation of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanic residents -- nearly 50 percent -- of any US state, and polls show that Hispanics overwhelmingly oppose Trump's immigration proposals.
New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, the nation's only Hispanic governor and head of the Republican Governors Association, has criticized Trump's remarks on immigration and was absent from Tuesday's event.
Trump addressed a rally of about 4,000 people but was frequently interrupted by protesters, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
