Holiday lights shone on stores with boarded-up windows as the city struggled to scrub itself clean for world trade organisation delegates meeting here and Christmas shoppers as hundreds of armoured police officers patrolled the streets.

Overnight, police cleared the newspaper boxes and burning trashbins that protesters had tossed in the streets to cut off their advance on Tuesday, but much of the graffiti and broken glass remained. Initial estimates by a local business group put the total damages in the millions of dollars.

Plywood put up to replace broken glass prevented window shopping in the normally bustling retail district. Many stores that were open had posted private security guards.

Several protesters, among the many who accuse the WTO of destroying the environment and workers' rights, spent the day scrubbing graffiti off buildings, even as they carried anti-WTO placards. ``We came to Seattle to peacefully protest the WTO and we didn't want to destroy this city,'' said Janina Bradley, 19, a student from Missoula, Montana. Handwritten signs announced many shops were open for business as merchants stood by locked doors to admit the handfuls of shoppers brave enough to venture downtown. One drug store with its broken windows boarded up posted a sign, reading, ``yes we are open.''