US blames Russia when Kyiv unleashes armored vehicles against civilians in eastern Ukraine

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39. In eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, law and order crumble on eve of secession vote

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Drunken mobs roamed the otherwise deserted center of this eastern port city Saturday a day after clashes between pro-Russian militants and Ukrainian security forces left at least seven people dead and the region as a whole continued to seethe on the eve of referendum to secede.

A deadly firefight Friday broke the calm of a patriotic holiday and heightened tensions ahead of Sunday’s hastily organized plebiscite to break with the interim government in Kiev. Late Friday, a group of unidentified assailants attacked and briefly detained several Red Cross volunteers, including a French citizen, at an office in Donetsk.

Iryna Tsaryuk, an employee of the Ukrainian office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kiev, told the Interfax news service Saturday that the seven employees who had been taken captive were released about 2 a.m. and that one had been hospitalized after a severe beating. Roman Lyagin, the head of the rebel election commission, denied that rebels were involved in the incident.

In another sign of the collapsing morale of Ukraine’s security forces, the national guard evacuated its barracks in Mariupol on Saturday morning, apparently hastily. In the city center, meanwhile, activists set fire to a broken-down infantry fighting vehicle that the army had abandoned the previous day, causing a string of explosions and an upsurge of panic, according to witnesses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/tensions-roil-on-eve-of-eve-of-secession-referendum-in-eastern-ukraine/2014/05/10/8703c1be-d823-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html