Authorities in a government-held town in eastern Ukraine have made arrests after violence that followed a road accident in which an armored vehicle struck and killed a young girl.
Angry residents of the Donetsk region town of Kostyantynivka threw stones at a barracks, torched two cars, and overturned a third after servicemen apparently lost control of an armored vehicle on March 16, killing a girl who was about 7 years old and injuring her aunt and a toddler.
Police stepped up patrols to avert any more unrest, Donetsk region police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin said on Facebook on March 17.
Abroskin said two servicemen responsible for the accident had been detained, and that organizers of the "disorder" had been identified.
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, told RFE/RL that "we respect the protest by the citizens after the tragedy, but we will do everything to prevent the Russian secret services and their supporters from further destabilizing the situation."
Kostyantynivka lies north of the regional capital, Donetsk, which is held by Russian-backed rebels whose conflict with government forces has killed more than 6,000 people since April.
