Protesters hosed

Protesters hosed

FEBRUARY 5: About 300 protesters in Manila, denouncing increases in oil prices, were forcibly dispersed by police armed with water jets on Friday when they tried to storm an oil company office office in the Philippines' central business district. Riot police and firemen moved in after demonstrators started to scale barbed wire barricades in front of the building housing the headquarters of Caltex (Philippines) Inc. in Makati, police and witnesses said.

The protesters had earlier sprayed the words ``rollback'' and hurled paint at the Petron Corp. headquarters and tried to force their way into the grounds of the Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. compound only to be forced out by riot police, an AFP journalist on the scene said.