Four Bomb Blasts Injure 27 in Ukraine
Four bombs exploded in a city in eastern Ukraine on Friday, wounding 27 people, including nine children, in what authorities described as an “act of terrorism”.
President Viktor Yanukovich said the blasts in Dnipropetrovsk, six weeks before Ukraine plays host to the European soccer championship, represented “a challenge … to the whole country.”
Bomb attacks are a rare occurrence in the former Soviet republic and the blasts one after the other traumatized people in the city, one of Ukraine’s main industrial centers with a population of around 1.3 million.
Police said the bombs had been left in rubbish bins at various points in the city. “No-one has been detained yet,” a police spokesman said.
Authorities offered no immediate explanation of any motive or say who they thought could be responsible. But the prosecutor general’s office formally opened a criminal case classifying the blasts as an “act of terrorism”.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the attacks could be exploited by his government’s critics. “It plays into the hand of the forces that want to destabilize the situation in the country …,” he wrote on his Facebook page.