TEGUCIGALPA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The Honduran soldiers and policemen guarding the country's border with Nicaragua on Friday used tear gas against the supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, to stop them from crossing the border in Las Manos sector.

Supporters of ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya clash with Honduran soldiers in El Paraiso, 12 km (7miles) from the border with Nicaragua, July 24, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    "The repression from these policemen began, the people begin to run from one side to another, the violence has been untied, we try to protect ourselves," said Gustavo Ramos, a reporter for the local "Radio Globo", while reporting on the scene from La Manos, some 125 km east of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

    "We have been attacked, see what it is happening to us; the people is here present, there are shootings, the people are crossing the hedge," one of the Zelaya supporters on the scene told the radio.

Supporters of ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya protest in El Paraiso, 12 km (7miles) from the border with Nicaragua, July 24, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    Thousands of Zelaya's supporters swarmed into the border area between Honduras and Nicaragua to greet a possible return of the ousted president on Friday.

    Witnesses said Zelaya arrived at the other side of the Honduran-Nicaraguan border on Friday afternoon, just several hundred meters away from the Honduran territory. The president, who was deposed in a June 28 military coup and forced into exile in Costa Rica, was attempting to reenter his country despite an arrest order issued against him by the post-coup leadership.

    Earlier in the day, the Honduran interim government imposed an emergency curfew on the border areas, and sporadic conflicts erupted along the border between pro-Zelaya demonstrators and the Honduran military and police.

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