Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has condemned a series on Friday bomb attacks in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk.
At least 29 people were injured in four explosions that hit the city on Friday afternoon within an interval of an hour and a half, according to official data. Unofficial reports put the number of blasts at ten. A criminal case has been opened under a terrorism statute, although a senior Ukrainian Security Service official, Vladimir Rokitsky, said it was too early to qualify the bombings as acts of terrorism.
“Canada condemns these cowardly acts without reservation and supports efforts to bring those responsible to justice swiftly,” Baird was quoted as saying in a statement published on Canadia’s Foreign Ministry website.
He added, however, that the investigation must be “fair and free of political interference.”
Baird also called on the Ukrainian authorities to avoid using the attacks “as a pretext to curtail basic freedoms like freedom of expression.”
“Of course, Canada denounces terrorism in all its forms and stands with those engaged in fighting it,” he said.
The first bomb went off at a tram stop in central Dnepropetrovsk just before midday on Friday. Half an hour later, the second blast struck outside a cinema. The third explosion occurred near a railway terminal and the fourth in a public park. All of the explosive devices were placed in garbage bins.
The attacks took place just weeks before the country welcomes the Euro 2012 football championship. No one has claimed responsibility.
Attacks by Islamist militants are rare in Ukraine. In November last year, a bomb went off in a garbage bin near a tram stop in Dnepropetrovsk, killing a local businessman. Authorities said it was a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, the fact that the Friday bombings were carried out in the hometown of jailed Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko led members of Ukraine’s rival political factions to speculate about possible motivations behind the attacks.
Nikolai Tomenko, member of Tymoshenko’s opposition Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, said in a statement that the government might have masterminded the attacks to “divert the attention of the world and Ukraine from Yulia Tymoshenko’s case.”
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov dismissed the allegation, saying it was the opposition who had most to gain from the attacks.
“The worse it is for simple people, the more they can level accusations at the current authorities and receive dividends,” he said in a statement.
Ukraine’s leading opposition figurehead, Tymoshenko has been jailed for seven years on charges of abusing her power by pushing through a 2009 gas deal with Russia in a trial condemned by Russia, the United States and European Union as politically motivated. Tymoshenko has denied any wrongdoing, declaring her prosecution part of President Viktor Yanukovych’s crackdown on political opponents. The Ukrainian authorities have rejected the claim.
Earlier this week, Tymoshenko, who has serious spinal problems, said she has gone on a hunger strike to protest against what she described as a “concentration camp” being created by Yanukovych in the middle of Europe.
Yanukovych, under fire from European politicians over Tymoshenko’s treatment, has ordered prosecutors to investigate her alleged beating by prison guards last week during a forced move to a hospital.
