The red-and-white tear gas dispersed what was left of the demonstration; afterward, Red Cross volunteers huddled over one woman, who protesters said was recovering from a severe asthma attack due to the gas.
Demonstrations erupted afterward in mainly Sunni Muslim neighborhoods in both the north and in Beirut, with youths rolling burning tires onto the roads and igniting trash containers to block traffic.
He said that Ms. Thomas, who had e-mailed her parents that she was avoiding the rowdy demonstrations in Genoa, left town afterward with 25 members of an Austrian protest group called Publix Theatre.
Milling around afterward, watching judo and fencing demonstrations, the couple leaned into each other, talking and nodding.
King was hit in the head with a rock, and said afterward, "I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today".
There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but a demonstration denouncing the government broke out shortly afterward.
Soon afterward, he attended an antigovernment demonstration, and was beaten by the police and jailed for a month.
They carried an intimation of chaos, if not in the demonstration itself, then from what could occur afterward.
"I expressed the view that we had no evidence that suggested that Iran started any of these popular revolutions or demonstrations across the region," Mr. Gates told reporters afterward on his plane.
Afterward, he decided that radicalized peace demonstrations were counterproductive and criticized anti-war figures such as Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Huey Newton, Abby Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin as "reckless" and "irresponsible".
