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Ukraine protesters declare general strike after clashes

AFP, Kiev
Ukrainian protesters declared a general strike and blockaded government buildings yesterday after violent clashes in which more than 100,000 sought early elections over the authorities' rejection of a historic EU pact.
Nearly 10,000 supporters of the ex-Soviet state's alliance with the European Union and disavowal of old master Russia camped out overnight on Kiev's iconic Independence Square in a bid to keep alive Ukraine's biggest pro-democracy protest since the 2004 Orange Revolution.
Thousands then moved toward government and state administration buildings calling for President Viktor Yanukovych's immediate ouster and a nationwide strike.
Streams of cars honked their horns in support while church bells rang out across the heart of the ancient capital in scenes posing the single biggest challenge to the president's three-year rule.
The swarming crowd had first defied a ban on protests on Sunday by driving lines of helmeted police off the same expansive square that provided the setting of the dramatic 2004 revolt.
Some of the more militant in the group also
steered a bulldozer within striking distance of barricades protecting the Yanukovych administration building.
Security forces outside the president's seat of power fired dozens of stun grenades and smoke bombs at masked demonstrators who were pelting police with stones and Molotov cocktails.
Kiev's city government said in an update yesterday that 165 police officers and demonstrators had been injured in the most serious clashes witnessed in Ukraine since the Soviet Union's demise.
The economically struggling nation of 46 million was thrown into crisis when Yanukovych snubbed EU leaders at a summit on Friday and refused a deal that would have paved Ukraine's way to eventual membership in the 28-nation bloc.
EU leaders primarily blamed the decision on the stinging economic punishments Russia had mooted should Ukraine take the fateful step toward the West.
Yet the move now threatens to backfire on Yanukovych as his political foes try to build momentum amid discontent with state corruption and disappearing jobs.
About 50,000 protesters also rallied on Sunday in the Ukrainian-speaking western city of Lviv. Another 250 EU supporters ignored a court ban in Yanukovych's native region of Donetsk.