Riot police fired live rounds at protesters in an explosion of violence in Kiev on Thursday that left more than 60 people dead as the European Union imposed sanctions on those with "blood on their hands". Bullet-riddled bodies were scattered amid smouldering debris after masked protesters hurling Molotov cocktails forced gun-toting police from the capital's Independence Square - the epicentre of the increasingly bloody revolt against President Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian rule.
Opposition medics said more than 60 protesters had been shot dead by police on Thursday alone. Kiev authorities for their part put the total toll from three days of violence at 67. Both sides accused each other of using snipers in a major escalation of the crisis sparked by Yanukovych's rejection in November of an EU pact in favour of closer ties with Moscow.
Three European Union foreign ministers held talks with the president and opposition leaders in Kiev to discuss a way out of the turmoil. The White House meanwhile said it was "outraged by the images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people". In a makeshift morgue in a hotel overlooking the square, where seven bodies were lined up, volunteer medics accused police of killing demonstrators with live rounds. "They were shot in the head or in the heart by live bullets, not by rubber ones," said first aid worker Natalia.
Faced with international outrage, Ukraine's interior ministry said it reserved the right to use live munition "in self-defence", but would not comment on opposition claims that its snipers were picking out protesters from the crowd. The ministry also accused "extremists" of seizing 67 of its troops at gunpoint and holding them hostage in one of buildings near the war-scarred square. The shocking scale of bloodshed in a strategic nation that serves as a brittle diplomatic bridge between Russia and the West prompted EU officials to follow their US counterparts and slap travel bans against Ukrainians responsible for ordering the use of force.