Three protesters killed, 150 injured in Kiev clashes

KIEV, Feb 18, (AFP): At least three anti-government protesters were killed and some 150 others injured, some seriously, on Tuesday in fresh clashes between police and demonstrators in Kiev, opposition medics said.
Medics at an opposition-run field hospital said that most of the injuries were caused by stun grenades while some of the 30 people in a serious condition had suffered head injuries, and one person had to have a hand amputated.
Meanwhile: Ukrainian opposition protesters on Tuesday attacked the party headquarters of embattled President Viktor Yanukovych as fierce clashes with police erupted again in Kiev for the first time in weeks.
Protesters briefly seized the party headquarters after several hundred attacked it with Molotov cocktails and smashed their way inside but later withdrew as smoke continued to billow from part of the building, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
It marked the first violent clashes since mid-January in the Ukrainian capital, which has been wracked by anti-government demonstrations since Yanukovych in November rejected an EU pact in favour of closer ties with historical master Russia.
Demonstrators turned their ire on Yanukovych's party after clashes broke out with riot police around the nearby building of the Ukrainian parliament, where some 20,000 mainly peaceful protesters had massed to demand legislators strip the president of a raft of powers.
Police fired rubber bullets and hurled smoke bombs and stun grenades at protesters who threw paving stones and set two trucks on fire trying to break through to the heavily-fortified parliament.
Ukraine's interior ministry said in a statement that three servicemen were injured after protesters directed a truck through the police ranks.A photographer was injured by a stun grenade in the turmoil and taken to hospital, an AFP reporter said.
Demonstrators were calling on the Rada parliament-where Yanukovych's party has a majority-to vote on returning the country to its 2004 constitution, under which key powers would shift from the president to parliament.
The demonstrators had marched from Kiev's iconic Independence Square, where the opposition remains firmly entrenched in a sprawling tent city after nearly three months of protests against Yanukovych's rule. Opposition leaders called on Yanukovych to give into their demands if he wanted to defuse the violence.
"The president of Ukraine must call early presidential and parliamentary elections. I am sure that this will reduce the temperature of society," former heavyweight boxer and opposition leader Vitali Klitschko said in televised comments.