Two young men battled 'with sticks', walking into traffic and drawing a large crowd in Kingston town centre this afternoon, according to a witness.

Police were out in force to deal with the aftermath of the incident near Wilkinsons in Kingston.

One witness, who asked not to be named, said: "There's been youths with sticks hitting each other.

"There's a big crowd gathering around. There's five police cars and a guy with blood on his face."

He described walking past the Rotunda earlier to seeing two young men exchanging verbal abuse at each other on the other side of the one-way system outside Barcadia.

He said: "They were having a go at each other saying 'have a go' or something.

"They started wandering out into the road. There was their mates, about six or seven of them and a girl.

"They were having verbal exchanges and threatening each other."

He said one of the men walked away round the corner towards Pizza Express in Clarence Street when the abuse started again but the men appeared to have sticks of some sort.

The witness, who followed after them, said: "It was then I saw them with sticks,  maybe mops?

"I don't know where they got them from. I heard them whacking some posts outside Little Italy restaurant.

"They were hitting it. One ended up hitting the other one. Police cars started arriving.

"People were watching with their phones out. It was a little bit scary."

One older black Afro-Caribbean lady appeared to try to intervene at one point, he said.

"There was an older lady and she was raising her voice at them and it seemed like she was saying 'put your things away'."

Did you see what happened? Call the newsdesk on 020 8744 4244.