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Top Kiev official wounded in shooting incident in city center

The shooting was started by an activist of the Right Sector far-right group

© EPA/YEVGENY MALOLETKA

KIEV, March 31, /ITAR-TASS/. Three people, including deputy head of the Kiev city state administration Bogdan Dubas, were wounded in a shooting incident in the Ukrainian capital’s center near the Mafia restaurant on Monday, Kiev police told Itar-Tass.

The shooting was started by an activist of the Right Sector far-right group, Ukrainian parliament-appointed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Monday.

“A Right Sector activist started shooting near the Mafia caf·. Three people were wounded, including two of them seriously. The wounded are two Maidan self-defense soldiers and Kiev city administration deputy head Bogdan Dubas,” Avakov said.

“The reasons for the shooting are unknown. The wounded are in a hospital,” Avakov said.

He said the shooter was blocked inside the caf· by other activists, adding that Right Sector representatives led the shooter out and accompanied him to the Dnepr hotel.

The minister said he ordered to detain those involved in the incident.

About 2,000 activists from the Right Sector on March 27 gathered in front of the building of the Ukrainian unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in Kiev. Activists stormed the building, smashing windows in it and causing lawmakers to leave. The radicals later retreated.

The storm followed the killing of Right Sector coordinator, ultranationalist Alexander Muzychko (Sashko Bily), wanted by Russia for torture and killings of Russian soldiers in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya in 1994-2000, in a special operation by Ukrainian law enforcers in western Ukraine on March 25.

Right Sector activists had also reportedly been involved in deadly clashes with police in Ukraine’s anti-government protests that eventually led to last month's coup in the country.

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