Protesters, police in standoff in Kiev after sporadic clashes

KIEV: Protesters and Ukrainian police were on Saturday still locked in a tense standoff in Kiev after a night of sporadic clashes that erupted despite a truce and offer of concessions by President Viktor Yanukovych. The epicentre of the two month-long crisis - Ukraine´s worst since 1991 - was relatively calm early Saturday but hundreds of protesters were still at the scene with the security forces on the other side of their lines. The opposition and authorities also accused each other of provoking further unrest after a body of a policeman was found in southern Kiev and a court jailed over a dozen protesters for two months. Overnight, demonstrators had hurled Molotov cocktails at police who responded with stun grenades and rubber bullets. The exchanges on Grushevsky Street in Kiev lacked the ferocious intensity of those earlier in the week but will raise concerns about the sustainability of the truce brokered by opposition leader and world champion Vitali Klitschko in place since early Thursday. The clashes had killed five activists earlier in the week, according to protesters. The authorities have confirmed two shooting deaths but insisted police were not involved. Protesters set fire to the barricade of tyres at their frontline and kept it going throughout the night while banging on a makeshift war drum of metal sheets as the noxious smoke made them almost invisible to the police. Toward the morning however they allowed the fires to die down and used them mainly to warm themselves amid temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).The interior ministry meanwhile said a body of a police officer was found in southern Kiev, though without linking it to the protesters or clashes which have mostly engulfed the city centre. The ministry further accused the opposition camp´s security of "attacking three police officers" near the Independence Square protest hub, injuring one of them with a knife and holding the other two captive. The opposition denied responsibility for the attack or the killing Saturday and asked the police "not to provoke the situation by spreading false and dangerous news."