Kiev unrest death toll rises to 25

( Agencies ) Updated: 2014-02-19 16:36:01

Anti-government protesters receive medical treatment inside Mikhailovsky Zlatoverkhy Cathedral (St. Michael's golden-domed cathedral) in Kiev during the early hours February 19, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

KIEV - Ukrainian protesters poured on to a central Kiev square on Wednesday, preparing to confront police anew after the bloodiest day since the former Soviet republic, caught in a geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West, won its independence.

After hours of clashes, police had gained ground overnight in Independence Square, centre of three months of protests against President Viktor Yanukovich, and were occupying about a third of the square at 8 am on Wednesday.

The square resembled a battle-zone with black smoke and flames belching from a trade union building, used as an anti-government headquarters.

The Health Ministry, updating the casualty toll, said 25 people had been killed in the fighting in the capital, of which nine were police officers.

Many were killed by gunshot and hundreds of people were injured, with dozens in serious condition, police and opposition representatives said.

Police, protected by a barrier of shields, were destroying protesters' tents and anti-government posters on the eastern side of the square.

But protesters, many of them masked and in battle fatigues, were pouring onto the square from another direction and preparing to take on police for a second straight day.

As priests intoned prayers from a stage on the part of the square still held by protesters, young men in hard-hats were constructing elbow and knee pads - protection against baton blows. Others were pouring inflammable liquid into bottles - apparently to be used as petrol bombs.

Across the square people were using pickaxes to tear up cobblestones to use them as projectiles against police.

"They can come in their thousands but we will not give in. We simply don't have anywhere to go. We will stay until victory and will hold the Maidan until the end," said a 44-year-old from the western region of Ternopil who gave only his first name of Volodymyr.

The Maidan is the local name for Independence Square.

"We will stay until victory. We want our children to grow up in a normal country where there are civilised laws not the laws of a prison colony," said Vitaly, aged 36.