Ukrainian protesters clashed with police in Kiev after at least 10,000 people took to Independence Square for an anti-government demonstration.

Ukrainian protesters clashed with police in Kiev after at least 10,000 people took to Independence Square for an anti-government demonstration. Police retaliation with tear gas and water cannons was prompted by an attempt to storm the government quarter.

What started as a peaceful demonstration on the city’s Independence Square, or Maidan, with heated anti-government slogans being shouted and the announcement that the opposition was creating a “people’s assembly,” turned into violent clashes with the police later Sunday.

Protesters wearing orange helmets and wielding sticks and flares clashed with cordons of security forces surrounding government buildings and attempted to turn over a police bus. According to police, radical activists were also throwing smoke grenades.

As tension grew, media reports said police used teargas to push back the crowd.
Some of the protesters started breaking up the pavement, arming themselves with rubble.

The most aggressive group of protesters started throwing stones, debris and Molotovs directly at the police, with some of the petrol bombs landing in the midst of cordons and setting policemen’s uniform on fire.

At least 70 law enforcers have been injured in violent riots and 4 of them are in serious condition, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesperson told Ria novosti.

Witnesses from the scene reported that one of the policemen was dragged out of the cordon and beaten by several masked people, and then taken to a tent in Maidan for medical treatment by other protesters. Police officials later reported that he suffered head injuries, broken ribs and nose and has been taken to hospital in “a state of shock.”

A water canon was deployed to the scene of the clashes by the police, but has so far been used only against those attacking the security cordon. The protesters have particularly been keen to discuss the armored vehicle on the Internet as the temperature in Kiev lowered to a freezing -7 degrees Celsius.