Protesters attacked Connecticut delegates near the site of the Republican National Convention Monday in a demonstration where more than a dozen people were arrested by police using pepper spray amid window-smashing, bottle-throwing and tire-slashing.

Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons of Stonington, who was among the delegates, said the group was returning from lunch and had parked about six blocks away from the convention center. He said that although there were wire screens closer to the center to protect people on the sidewalks, the Connecticut buses had parked beyond the screens and that left the delegation vulnerable as they walked to the convention center.

In what Simmons described as a random attack, the group of about 60 delegates and alternates were attacked by a group of selfdescribed anarchists.

“They tried to block us and actually pinned us against the wall,” Simmons said in a phone call from the convention today. “Some guys got spit on.”

Simmons said they tried to grab the credentials from the oldest member of the group, 83-year-old Stratford delegate Fred Biebel, as well as the mother of state Republican party chairman Chris Healy. Simmons said he believes the group was intentionally targeting the elderly and women.

The group eventually pushed through and got free, but not before about a dozen of them were sprayed in the face with a liquid that burned their eyes and discolored their clothes. A hazmat team later identified the liquid as “oxidizer and water,” Simmons said, which was probably household bleach.

It was a violent counterpoint to an otherwise peaceful anti-war march not far from the Xcel Energy Center convention site.

Many protesters involved in the more violent protest were clad in black and identified themselves to reporters as anarchists. They wrought havoc by damaging property and setting at least one fire. Most of the trouble was in pockets of a neighborhood near downtown, several blocks from where the convention was taking place.

Police estimates of the crowd shifted several times during the event, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands.

Late Monday afternoon, long after the antiwar marchers had dispersed, police requested and got 150 Minnesota National Guard soldiers to help control splinter groups near downtown.

Simmons, who said he is still having trouble with his left eye, said the groups providing convention security should have protected the Connecticut delegates.

“We have a right to be here, and we have a right to be secure,” he said. When police asked if the group had provoked the protesters, he said he responded, “What are you talking about? We were just walking down the damn sidewalk.”

Simmons said the Biebel, who has heart trouble, had trouble breathing after the incident and was checked by medical personnel.

“We’re keeping a close eye on him,” he said.

Biebel, a delegate at every GOP convention since 1956, told The Hartford Courant it was not his scariest moment at a convention.

“It compared a little bit, not as bad, to 1968,” Biebel said, referring to the year in which protesters smashed the delegates’ bus windows with rocks.

Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire Monday and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said. Authorities didn’t have immediate details on the other arrests.

The antiwar march was organized by a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, whose leaders said they hoped for a peaceful, family- friendly event. But police were on high alert after months of preparations by a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which wasn’t among the organizers of the march.

About 20 people dressed in black tried to block a key intersection. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at them as the fled.

Pictures taken by Associated Press photographers showed officers using pepper spray on people who appeared to be trying to block streets.

Up to 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged their own march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rearview mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.

One member of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” The group chanted: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

At one point, people pushed a trash bin filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn’t appear to damage the bus.

After the official march ended, police spent hours dispersing smaller groups of protesters, employing officers on horses, smoke bombs and tear gas.

Protesters put eye drops in each other’s eyes after police used chemical irritants such as pepper spray and tear gas. Some wore bandanas and masks to protect themselves.

Protesters were seen lying on an interstate exit ramp to block traffic in downtown St. Paul and linking arms to block other roads.

Terry Butts, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who is a convention delegate, was on a bus taking delegates to the arena when a brick through the window sprayed glass on him and two others. Butts said he wasn’t hurt.

“It just left us a little shaken,” he said. “It was sort of a frightening moment because it could have been a bomb or a Molotov cocktail.”