Clashes between Ukrainian security forces and anti-government protesters broke out again Thursday in the capital, Kiev, as a truce called by President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders appeared to have fallen apart. 


Reporters from the Associated Press and Reuters said they saw bodies of protesters lying in Independence Square, which has been the site of the main protest encampment since November. A medic for the protesters, Bohdan Soloviy, told the Associated Press eight protesters were killed by gunfire on Thursday as demonstrators tried to take control of a building near the encampment.

Reuters photographer Vasily Fedosenko told the news agency said he saw six bodies lying at the northwestern side of the square and then a few moments later saw a further four bodies just over 300 feet away at the other side of the plaza. He also reported seeing five dead bodies in front of the hotel Ukraina, on a hill above the square. BBC correspondent Duncan Crawford also reported seeing five dead bodies in the hotel's lobby. All of the dead were civilians, Fedosenko reported. 

Yanukovych announced the truce late Wednesday after two days of fierce street fighting that had killed at least 28 people and injured 287 more, according to numbers provided by the Ukrainian health ministry. Protesters dispute those numbers, claiming that the true toll is much higher. A makeshift medical facility for injured demonstrators has been set up in a nearby cathedral. 
Sky News correspondent David Bowden reported Thursday that snipers could be seen on rooftops Thursday morning aiming at protesters in the square below. Bowden reported that one bullet had gone through the window of his hotel room and "took a chunk" out of the ceiling. 

"The police seem to have been caught off guard and they're reacting very aggressively and basically just shooting people," Bowden reported. "I've seen at least a dozen people pulled out injured. It's unclear whether there have been any fatalities. I do think this is going to be a fairly bloody day."
Smoke from burning barricades surrounding the protest camp rose above the Kiev skyline, as several thousand protesters remained on the square and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at lines of police, who responded with stun grenades. An Associated Press cameraman saw one unconscious protester being taken off the square in a stretcher, as well as numerous others with minor injuries.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry claimed in a statement Thursday that 20 police officers had been injured by gunfire. The statement did not specify when the police were wounded, but it did say the gunfire appeared to be coming from the national music conservatory, which is on the edge of the square. Also Thursday, the parliament building was evacuated because of fears protesters were preparing to storm it, said parliament spokeswoman Irina Karnelyuk.

The foreign ministers of European Union members France, Germany and Poland were meeting with Yanukovych Thursday. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had said that he and his counterparts would meet both sides in Ukraine ahead of the EU meeting on possible sanctions. He said he hoped the two sides "will find a way for dialogue."

Possible sanctions include travel bans and asset freezes, which could hit hard the powerful oligarchs who back Yanukovych.

The latest bout of street violence began Tuesday when protesters attacked police lines and set fires outside parliament, accusing Yanukovych of ignoring their demands to enact constitutional reforms that would limit the president's power -- a key opposition demand. Parliament, dominated by his supporters, was stalling on taking up a constitutional reform to limit presidential powers.

The mood on the square Thursday was calmer than in the previous two days of violence, the most deadly since protests kicked off three months ago after President Viktor Yanukovych shelved an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. After Yanukovych shelved the agreement with the EU, Russia announced a $15 billion bailout for Ukraine, whose economy is in tatters.

Police responded by attacking the protest camp. Armed with water cannons, stun grenades and rubber bullets, police dismantled some barricades. But the protesters held their ground through the night, encircling the protest camp with new burning barricades of tires, furniture and debris.

The ongoing violence on the square Thursday indicates that more radical elements among the protesters may be unwilling to observe the truce and may not be mollified by the prospects of negotiations. Although the initial weeks of protests were determinedly peaceful, radicals helped drive an outburst of clashes with police in January in which at least three people died, and the day of violence on Tuesday may have radicalized many more.

Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko, who along with two other leaders met with the president late on Wednesday to discuss a truce, said the president assured them that police would not storm the protesters' encampment on Kiev's Independence Square, according to the Interfax news agency.
A brief statement published on the president's website late on Wednesday did not give details of what terms a truce would entail or how it would be implemented. Nor did it specify how the negotiations would be conducted or give an indication of how they would be different from previous meetings of the president and the opposition leaders.

President Barack Obama stepped in to condemn the violence, warning Wednesday "there will be consequences" for Ukraine if it continues. The U.S. has raised the prospect of joining with the EU to impose sanctions against Ukraine.

On a visit to Mexico, Obama said the Ukrainian military should not step into a situation that civilians should resolve and added that the U.S. holds Ukraine's government primarily responsible for dealing with peaceful protesters appropriately.

Russia's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, described the violence as an attempted coup and even used the phrase "brown revolution," an allusion to the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. The ministry said Russia would use "all our influence to restore peace and calm."

In Kiev, Ukraine's top security agency accused protesters Wednesday of seizing hundreds of firearms from its offices and announced a nationwide anti-terrorist operation to restore order.

Demonstrators, meanwhile, forced their way into the main post office on Kiev's Independence Square, also known as the Maidan, after a nearby building they had previously occupied was burned down in fierce, fiery clashes late Tuesday with riot police. Thousands of activists armed with fire bombs and rocks had defended the square, a key symbol of the protests.

"The revolution has turned into a war with the authorities," Vasyl Oleksenko, a retired geologist from central Ukraine, said Wednesday. "We must fight this bloody, criminal leadership. We must fight for our country, our Ukraine!"

Before the truce was announced the bad blood was running so high it has fueled fears the nation could be sliding toward a messy breakup. While most people in the country's western regions resent Yanukovych, he enjoys strong support in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions, where many want strong ties with Russia.

Neither side had appeared willing to compromise, with the opposition insisting on Yanukovych's resignation and an early election and the president apparently prepared to fight until the end.
Opposition lawmaker Oleh Lyashko warned that Yanukovych himself was in danger.
"Yanukovych, you will end like (Muammar) Qaddafi," Lyashko told thousands of angry protesters. "Either you, a parasite, will stop killing people or this fate will await you. Remember this, dictator!"
Before the truce announcement, Yanukovych had blamed the protesters for the violence and said the opposition leaders had "crossed a line when they called people to arms."

"I again call on the leaders of the opposition ... to draw a boundary between themselves and radical forces, which are provoking bloodshed and clashes with the security services," the president said in a statement. "If they don't want to leave -- they should acknowledge that they are supporting radicals."
He called for a day of mourning Thursday for the dead.

In Moscow, the Kremlin said it put the next disbursement of its bailout on hold amid uncertainty over Ukraine's future and what it described as a "coup attempt."

On Wednesday, the U.S. denied admission to the United States for about 20 individual Ukrainians the U.S. believes are responsible for the actions against the most recent violence Tuesday night in Kiev. This action means that if they were to apply for visas, they would be denied.

A senior State Department official, who is closely following the unrest in Ukraine, said these individuals represent the "full chain of command that we consider responsible for ordering security forces to move against the Maidan yesterday."  The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and would brief reporters only on condition of anonymity.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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