KIEV, September 1. /TASS/. The number of injured in riots and a grenade explosion outside the Ukrainian parliament after Monday's vote on a decentralization bill has reached 141, the country’s Interior Ministry spokesman has said.
The majority of them - 131 - are police officers and members of the National Guard, including 10 in grave condition, spokesman Artyom Shevchenko wrote on his Facebook page.
Earlier reports said one serviceman of the National Guard was killed in the violence.
Eighteen people are currently detained for participating in the riots outside the parliament in Kiev and another thirteen have been already released.
An advisor to the interior minister, Zoryan Shkiryak, said two of those detained are the members of the Sich police battalion formed from volunteers. "One of them is suspected of using a grenade against the law enforcers."
More than 3,000 people opposed to amendments to Ukraine’s constitution staged pickets outside Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on Monday as the MPs were considering the constitutional amendments supposed to decentralize power in Ukraine and find a political peaceful settlement to the Donbass conflict.
The protesters clashed with the police. Someone from the crowd hurled a grenade in the direction of police cordons surrounding the parliament building.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has accused Ukraine’s nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party and its leader Oleh Tyahnybok of this fresh outbreak of violence.