By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -A man was arrested on Monday after a car crashed into the Russian consulate in Sydney, Australian police said.
New South Wales police said in a statement that officers responded shortly after 8 a.m. (2200 GMT) to reports of an unauthorised vehicle parked in the driveway of an address on Fullerton Street that corresponded with the location of the Russian consulate.
Officers attempted to speak to the driver before he drove his vehicle into the gates of the property,
police said.
A 39-year-old man was arrested and a 24-year-old constable received an injury to his hand, the statement said.
A person answering a phone at the consulate declined to comment on the incident.
Tim Enright, a construction worker who was on the roof of a nearby building at the time, said he saw a police officer taking photos of a car parked near the consulate around 8 a.m.
He said he then heard sirens and a police helicopter arrived at the scene.
A flatbed truck later took a white vehicle away from the grounds of the consulate, a Reuters witness said.
The consulate was briefly closed before reopening, said people behind a police cordon who had Monday visa appointments.
Earlier, television footage from Australian TV networks Sky News and Nine had shown a car with a smashed window abandoned next to a Russian flagpole on the grounds of Russia's consulate in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham and Praveen Menon in Sydney; Writing by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Kim Coghill and Tom Hogue)
