About two million protesters choked Hong Kong’s streets in a powerful rebuke of a reviled extradition law, organisers said Sunday, piling pressure on the city’s embattled pro-Beijing leader who apologised for causing “conflict” but refused to step down.

The show of force saw vast crowds marching for hours in tropical heat, calling for the resignation of chief executive Carrie Lam, who was forced to suspend the bill as public anger mounted.

Throngs of largely black-clad protesters snaked their way for miles through the streets to the city’s parliament – with the organisers’ estimate for the crowd size doubling an already record-breaking demonstration the previous Sunday in the city of 7.3 million.

The estimate has not been independently verified but if confirmed it would be the largest demonstration in Hong Kong’s history.

Hong Kong’s biggest protest to date was a massive rally in support of Tiananmen protesters in May 1989, before Beijing’s deadly crackdown, which sources at the time put at roughly 1.5 million strong.

Police, who historically give far lower estimates for political protests, said 338,000 people turned out at the demonstration’s “peak” Sunday.

Thousands were camping out overnight to continue the protest, including outside the legislature, with the police seemingly ceding the streets to the jubilant masses.

Critics fear the Beijing-backed law will entangle people in China’s notoriously opaque and politicised courts and damage the city’s reputation as a safe business hub.

Lam’s office put out a statement late Sunday admitting that shortcomings in how her administration handled the law had “led to a lot of conflict and disputes” and “disappointed and distressed many citizens”.

It came a day after she announced she would postpone the law indefinitely.

But it fell well short of protester demands that she resign, shelve the bill permanently and apologise for police using tear gas and rubber bullets earlier in the week.

The Civil Human Rights Front, which is organising the rallies, said Hong Kongers would protest and strike on Monday “until their voices are heard”.

The mass demonstration came as a Hong Kong protester died after falling from scaffolding as he attempted to hang a political banner, according to police.

Anger at police

The international finance hub was rocked Wednesday by the worst political violence since before its 1997 handover to China as tens of thousands of protesters were dispersed by baton-wielding riot police.

Many placards in the crowd Sunday accused police of using excessive force.

“You’re supposed to protect us not shoot at us,” read one banner.

“The police should not use rubber bullets, tear gas, and bean bag rounds to deal with the students,” protester Ben Choi told AFP.

Nearly 80 people were injured in this week’s unrest, including 22 police officers, with both sides showing a willingness to escalate their behaviour to levels unseen before in the usually stable business hub.

Hong Kong diaspora and critics of the bill overseas also held protests, including in Melbourne on Sunday.

‘Restore calm to the community’

The extradition furore is just the latest chapter in what many see as a battle for the soul of Hong Kong.

For the last decade the city has been convulsed by political turbulence between the pro-Beijing authorities and opponents who fear an increasingly assertive China is stamping on the city’s unique freedoms and culture.

But opposition to the extradition bill has united an unusually wide cross-section of Hong Kong from influential legal and business bodies, to religious leaders.

Lam’s decision to ignore those warnings, and press ahead with the bill even after last weekend’s massive rally, has placed her administration under pressure from both her opponents and her own allies.

Advisers and pro-establishment lawmakers urged her to delay the bill after Wednesday’s violence while Beijing began to distance itself from her administration.

Her climbdown was also a rare example of the city’s unelected leaders caving to demonstrations, something more recent administrations have been increasingly unwilling to do.

Two months of protests in 2014 calling for the right to directly Hong Kong’s leader won no concessions from Beijing and key figures from that movement are now in jail.

‘Keep the heat on’

But anger over the extradition law has reinvigorated Hong Kong’s democracy movement.

Estimates of Sunday’s crowd size will not be available until the evening but huge amounts of people were still joining the start four hours after the rally set off.

Police opened up more roads than usual with demonstrators packing four major arteries on their way to parliament.

Earlier in the day, activists had hung a huge banner from Lion Rock mountain that read “Defend Hong Kong”.

Inside China, the internet was being scrubbed of references to the massive rally with entries for Hong Kong on search engines and social media platforms showing no sign of the demonstration.

Police said they had no choice but to use force to meet violent protesters who besieged their lines outside the city’s parliament on Wednesday.

“The pro-democracy group will not stop at this point, they want to build on the momentum against Carrie Lam,” political analyst Willy Lam told AFP. “They will keep the heat on and ride the momentum.”