Hong Kong police said Thursday that eight people were detained in Mong Kok, a commercial district that has been occupied by protesters for over 20 days, after clashes occurred as local residents attempted to remove barricades.

The detained people allegedly committed 13 offences including common assault, possession of an offensive weapon, disorderly conduct and arson, according to a police statement.

Police stressed that Mong Kok's occupied streets remain a high-risk area. They said that clashes and crimes that undermine public order have continued to occur.

Fresh clashes broke out between protesters and residents who were trying to take down barricades on Thursday. Protesters claimed that they were attacked and the police failed to intervene, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) reported.

The High Court of Hong Kong said on Thursday that it has issued three interim injunctions over the past few days that forbid protesters from occupying key roads in the Mong Kok and Admiralty areas because their actions "have the real risk of turning into civil disorder," according to RTHK.

The court said that no matter what the underlying causes behind the movement are, it had "far exceeded the bounds of what was reasonable due to the length and size of the demonstrations and the increasingly violent confrontations between protesters and the police."

It added that a balance had to be struck between the public's right to use the roads and those who were exercising their right to demonstrate.

The injunctions were filed by local businesses who demanded the roads reopen to allow paralyzed traffic to flow.

The interim injunctions are set to expire on Friday.

Efforts to execute the court's orders were obstructed by occupiers on Wednesday when representatives of the groups that applied for the injunctions, accompanied by bailiffs, went to the Mong Kok protest site and tried to remove some of the barricades, according to the People's Daily.

Police cannot execute an injunction since it is a civil issue, the newspaper reported.

"According to the injunction, protesters cannot stop applicants from clearing the barricades. We are aware of residents' participation in barricade removal and we will dispatch more police officers to maintain order," Steve Hui Chun-tak, Chief Superintendent of the Police Public Relations Bureau, said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a signature collection campaign to support the police's actions will begin on Saturday.

"The campaign aims to show that the people of Hong Kong authorize the police to deal with the campaign. Occupy protesters see themselves as speaking for the people of Hong Kong, but their influence is not that huge," Robert Chow Yung, spokesperson for the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, the anti-Occupy group that initiated the signature collection campaign, told the Global Times.

Xinhua contributed to this story