Deadly violence shatters Ukraine truce as EU envoys hold crisis talks

KIEV, Feb 20 (AFP): Armed protesters stormed police barricades in Kiev Thursday in renewed violence that killed at least 26 people and shattered an hours-old truce as EU envoys held crisis talks with Ukraine's embattled president.
Bodies of anti-government demonstrators lay amid smouldering debris after masked protesters hurling Molotov cocktails and stones forced police from Kiev's iconic Independence Square-the epicentre of the ex-Soviet country's three-month-old crisis.
The retreating police unleashed a hail of rubber bullets on protesters as plumes of acrid smoke billowed into the air amid the explosions of stun grenades.
The lobby of the Ukraina hotel overlooking the square was turned into an impromptu morgue, with the bodies of seven dead protesters laying side by side under white sheets on the marble floor in front of the reception desk.
The news agency photographer saw spent live cartridge shells littering the ground on the square. It was unclear who had used the ammunition.
The main government building nearby was evacuated while lawmakers ended a session of parliament early after the violence.
The country's three main opposition leaders put the blame for the fresh unrest on the authorities, calling it a "planned provocation."
The clashes shattered a truce that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had called late Wednesday in response to a spurt of violence that killed more than two dozen people in less than two days.
Yanukovych was holding crisis talks with the foreign ministers of EU powers France and Germany along with Poland ahead of an emergency meeting in Brussels at which the European Union was expected to impose sanctions against Ukrainian government officials for the unrest.
The US State Department had earlier announced slapping travel bans on about 20 senior Kiev government figures over fighting that killed at least 28 people on same central Kiev square Tuesday night.
Yanukovych has appeared to struggle to formulate a clear policy over a frantic 48 hours that saw Ukraine's deadliest violence since independence and an escalating Cold War-like war of words between the West and former master Moscow over the future of the country sandwiched between Russia and the European Union.
The news agency reporters said they saw the bodies of at least 25 protesters with apparent gunshot wounds around two popular Independence Square hotels and lying outside the central Kiev post office Thursday.
Ukraine's interior ministry said that one policeman died from gunshot wounds sustained in the clashes while 29 officers had been injured.
The latest deaths bring to at least 54 the number of people killed in Ukraine since the start of the week, according to health ministry and the news agency counts.