KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st July, 2020) Blasts were heard at the site of the hostage-taking incident in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk, a correspondent for Ukraine's Channel 24 reported on Tuesday.
"About 20 minutes ago, three blasts were heard. One of them was an explosion and other suspicious pops. The military, when they were next to me, said that it was a sound allegedly from a grenade. A smoke cloud was visible," he said.
According to the UNN news agency, the explosions occurred at about 15:20 Moscow time (12:20 GMT).
According to the agency, the terrorist threw an unidentified explosive device from the bus. The device then exploded. Nobody was hurt.
Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko, in turn, said that the man, who introduced himself as Maksim Plokhoy, called the police at 9.25 a.m. (06:25 GMT), saying he had taken the passengers hostage at Teatralnaya Square in downtown Lutsk. He also said that he had explosives and weapons.
To confirm this, the man kept regularly shooting, including, according to local media reports, from a machine gun. After more than seven hours on the bus with hostages, the man continues to fire and throw explosive packages from the bus window.
Gerashchenko noted that the police had no confirmed information on the second remotely-controlled bomb, which according to Plokhoy was planted somewhere in Lutsk, however, security forces continue to search for it.
In the meantime, the police have sealed off the city center and evacuated residents of houses adjacent to the square while deploying military equipment. Ukraine's Security Service urged Lutsk residents to stay at home or at work.
The police also launched a criminal case under the "hostage-taking" article, which provides for a prison term of seven to 15 years. However, the deputy head of the Interior Ministry did not rule out that later the case would be reclassified as an act of terrorism.
As the security services have learned, Plokhoy was born in the village of Gay, located in the Orenburg Region of the Soviet Union in 1975. According to Gerashchenko, he has served a sentence twice for committing serious crimes.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, in turn, refuted some reports that the captor was treated in a mental hospital.
The criminal investigation department of the National Police of Ukraine has previously said on Telegram that the man was a patient at the psychiatric institution.
"You spread the information that this man was being treated in a mental hospital, such information is false," Avakov said during a briefing in Lutsk, broadcast by the NewsOne tv channel.
The minister added that the assailant had a smartphone and could see and hear all the comments.
Avakov went on to say that the hostages on the bus were fine.
According to the latest reports, the police handed over water to the captives.
Gerashchenko previously said that Plokhoy did not allow law enforcement officers to approach the bus with food and water for the hostages. Plokhoy also tried to shoot down police drones. There are reportedly pregnant women among the hostages.
"The first results of the negotiations in Lutsk. Maksim Krivosh [Plokhoy] allowed the police to hand over some water. The deputy national police chief, Yevhen Koval, handed the water over to the hostages," Gerashchenko wrote on his Facebook page.
As shown live on NewsOne TV channel, a man in a yellow vest approached the bus with a container in his hands, which he then handed over inside the bus. As the officer was leaving the site, Plokhoy fired again.
