More than 20 double-decker buses have been stuck in Bank since 7am after protesters glued themselves to the road.

The empty vehicles, now with their engines off, are queuing down Lombard Street and King William Street, as Extinction Rebellion activists kick-start their second week of campaigning.

Today they are targeting financial institutions within the City of London for investing in fossil fuels and supporting intensive farming and logging.

Earlier this morning, one protester was filmed lying in front of a double-decker bus as a lorry tried to get through the road.

While at one point, an ambulance was halted by the protest for about 20 seconds, before people moved for it to pass through the road.

Police have since begun arresting activists under a Section 40 order for obstructing traffic.

Activists who glued their hands together on the road were pictured being treated by officers, armed with syringes of liquid to dissolve it.

A spokesperson for the Met Police confirmed today that 1,336 people have been arrested in the capital since last Monday.

Protester Ben McGorty, 49, spent five hours glued to the top of a trailer in Trafalgar Square last week and told Metro.co.uk that the police were taking ‘great care’ to remove people painlessly.

He said: ‘We use rapid setting superglue, there are about five or six available on the market. We always glue the skin.

‘It can be quite painful to remove yourself, but police removal is not painful at all. They have special equipment and they take such great care, I can’t emphasis it enough.

‘I was glued to a fiberglass roof and that really takes to the glue well! If you want to remove yourself, you call in the insolvent and someone will bring you it.

‘You have to gently apply it under your skin but then you can get fed up and just rip it off in the end. I’m a manual worker, so my hands are a bit more accustomed to this.’

Ben, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, said none of the XR protesters ‘want to be doing this’, but they feel there is ‘no other way’.

He added: ‘I’m doing this for my kids, I want them to be able to look at their dad and know he tried his hardest not to leave them with this mess.’

Traffic from five roads around Bank Underground station has been blocked by the chanting protesters, who were undeterred by the rain.

One banker told PA he was joining the demonstration on his lunch break and would be wearing an XR sticker in the office.

Iris Skipworth, 20, said passers-by had shouted at her: ‘Get a job, you w****r’ and ‘Why don’t you go extinct?’.

She added: ‘I’m here because the 33 banks around the City of London gave £66 billion to the fossil fuel industry this year, and £900 billion since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

‘The Government has declared a climate emergency, yet they’re not even scaling this back slightly. We’re here to hit the Government in the wallet, hopefully.’

Carolina Rosa, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, said: ‘The City of London is a preeminent nexus of power in the global system that is killing our world.’

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