HORRIFYING footage shows police in hazmat suits breaking into a Shanghai man’s apartment and dragging him away screaming amid the world’s toughest Covid lockdown.
In a video filmed from a nearby building, the man backs onto his balcony to get away, before he appears to be brought down by some sort of stun gun.
The police sent in dogs in a violent raid and reportedly dragged him away to a quarantine camp.
It comes as Shanghai‘s 26 million residents remain under incredibly strict lockdown conditions, which Chinese authorities have justified as a way to get the city’s Covid cases under control.
Reports are spreading of residents going days without food while pets have been beaten to death after their owners tested positive.
In shocking video that went viral on Chinese social media, starving shoppers raided a Shanghai supermarket.
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The social media user who posted the footage claimed the group felt powerless over the shortage of food.
They said: “It was started from a small community, people started to protest and demanded for food supply.
“Then they broke the police defence line and loot the food from a nearby supermarket.”
In eerie scenes, video captured the moment ordinary citizens appeared to start screaming spontaneously, after being forbidden from leaving their houses for over a week.
Children have been forcibly removed from their parents and kept in cages, under strict measures imposed on the world’s third-largest city.
Already, chilling clips allegedly shows trapped citizens jumping to their deaths from high-rise apartments, while drone footage shows the megacity’s once-bustling streets completely deserted.
On Tuesday, Shanghai authorities allowed around 5.5 million people to leave their homes, but some were forced to stay in their own neighbourhoods.
Some housing compounds also appeared to remain locked, and no further loosening of restrictions was announced on Wednesday.
Officials warn that Shanghai still doesn’t have its latest surge in omicron cases under control, despite its zero-Covid approach which has seen some residents confined to their homes for at least three weeks.
China also requires anyone who tests positive or who is a close contact of a positive case to be sent to a quarantine camp.
The city’s health bureau announced on Wednesday that 6,044 people had been allowed to leave the centres the day before, although they will still be monitored.
Shanghai’s number of newly-detected daily cases continued to rise to 26,338, although all but 1,189 of them showed no symptoms.
No Covid deaths have been reported in the city, despite China’s biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with 200,000 total cases.
This has sparked major anger in China, where open signs of opposition to the government are unusual.
Many have complained of being unable to use online delivery services, and have accused authorities of supplying pitiful food rations.
Internet censors have rushed to take down any signs of dissent from social media, while state-controlled channels and newspapers have branded the campaign as a success.
However, earlier this week, some residents said the city feels close to “civil unrest”.
One foreign ex-pat living in the city told Sky News: “It’s a dire situation here in Shanghai.
“I’ve got friends who have run out of food, their communities don’t help them as they are foreigners, no information to let us know what’s going on and it seems more and more panic seems to be causing breakouts of fights between the locals as everyone is starving.”
They added: “If this was anywhere in Europe, by day five of not having food people would be rioting in the streets.”
With other cities in China introducing similar measures, further signs of public unrest have escaped the government’s censors.
Footage from Changzhou in Jiangsu province shows crowds breaking through a cordon to get at food supplies.
The group were seen pushing toward a dismantled barrier and forcing their way past panicked officials wearing blue PPE.
A helpless official tries to re-erect a gate pushed to its side by the group, some members of the mob force their way past the barricade.
