27 Injured in Ukraine blasts as Euro-2012 looms

At least 27 people were hurt in Ukraine's eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk Friday in four blasts that President Viktor Yanukovych called a challenge to the nation ahead of the Euro 2012 football championship. A total of 27 people including nine children were injured in the succession of explosions and 25 of them were hospitalised, emergencies officials told AFP, as police kept combing the city on the Dnieper River for more bombs. President Viktor Yanukovych vowed a firm response to the explosions, which came weeks before the European tournament that Ukraine is co-hosting with Poland. "We know that there are victims, we understand that this is another challenge, for the entire nation," he told journalists while on a visit to a factory in the Crimea on the Black Sea. "We will think about how to respond adequately," he said. "I think we will figure it out. It's a pity that this has happened," Interfax quoted him as saying. Dnipropetrovsk is not a host city in the country's first major international sports event, but is on the route of the trophy tour that is due there on May 21. It is about 100 kilometres (65 miles) from the nearest host city Donetsk, where the first match is scheduled for June 11. Dnipropetrovsk is also the home town of Yanukovych's fierce opponent, the 2004 Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a jail sentence for abuse of power that has strained Ukraine's relations with the European Union. Tymoshenko, 51, has been on hunger strike since last Friday and has said she suffered a beating in the prison where she is serving her disputed seven-year sentence. Footage on Russia's NTV channel showed people crowding around a tram stop where one of the blasts occurred. Some bandaged the injured, making tourniquets out of trouser belts. Other victims were lying on the pavement, blood oozing from their wounds. "The explosion went off when the tram was starting to leave, there were no people at the stop" but passengers inside were hit by window glass shards, regional police spokesman Oleksiy Shcherbatov said in televised remarks. Officials earlier said that the first blast went off in a rubbish bin near a movie theatre in the centre of the city at 11:50 a.m. (0850 GMT). A second blast followed about 40 minutes later and the third, in another busy central street, 15 minutes after that, emergencies officials said. The fourth explosion went off at 1:00 p.m. (1000 GMT), the interior ministry said without providing further details. All four blasts were in the same part of the city located not far from the Dnieper. Twenty-five people were hospitalised by mid-afternoon, the emergencies ministry said. Ukrainian prosecutors launched a probe into possible acts of terrorism, with top officials including Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko quickly leaving for Dnipropetrovsk to personally oversee the investigation. No information was released as to the possible perpetrators of the blasts. A similar series of explosions in eastern Ukraine in January last year was linked by officials to an attempt to extort money. "So far nothing is clear," a high-ranking official told AFP. Local police were on high alert and asked residents to "pay attention to suspicious objects" while they searched for more explosives. The blasts went off as security services were conducting anti-terrorist drills at the Olympic stadium in the capital Kiev, venue for several matches in the Euro-2012 including the final on July 1.