Six people were killed after a gunman opened fire in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said

A gunman who killed at least six people in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, before taking hostages and barricading himself in a supermarket on Saturday, was shot dead by police, Ukrainian officials said.

Dispersed Ukrainian police raided the store after efforts to contact the gunman failed, the head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, Ihor Klymenko, said in a statement on social media. The attacker was killed when he refused to be arrested, he said.

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Klymenko said the gunman killed four people on the street, before entering a supermarket and killing a fifth person.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the sixth victim, a young woman, died of her injuries in hospital.

An Associated Press reporter who was at the scene saw the bodies of the victims on the street covered with blankets before they were taken away.

Klymenko said the shooter was born in 1968 but did not give any more information about his identity. The police who were interviewing him spoke with the attacker for about 40 minutes before storming the building, he said.

Before the gunman was shot, a female police officer who was wearing body armor, standing behind an armored car, used a microphone to call out to the gunman and urged him: “People should not be blamed for this. Please go and talk to you.”

“We tried to persuade him, knowing that there might be someone injured inside. We even asked to bring tourniquets to stop the bleeding, but he did not respond,” said Klymenko. “Therefore, an order was issued for him not to enter.”

Klymenko, who was wearing body armor, said the man was carrying a carbine. The short-barrel gun is legally registered, he added.

Last December, the attacker “went to the license authorities to check the weapon as the permit was expiring. He gave a doctor’s certificate. He also applied to renew his permit for this weapon. That’s all we can say for now,” said Klymenko.

He added that the investigation will determine which health center issued the certificate.

The shooting happened in the Kyiv region, Holosiivskyi, the mayor said. Television footage from the scene showed police hiding in the shopping center that housed the supermarket when the shooting took place. Bystanders were escorted away from the scene.

The firing comes as Russia and Ukraine trade strikes

And on Saturday, there was a citizen he was killed in Donetsk and dozens were injured in a night attack by Russia. Local officials reported that at least 26 people were injured in the attacks in northern and eastern Ukraine, including the strike port infrastructure in the city of Odessa.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian airstrike targeted industrial sites in Novokuibyshevsk and Syzran in Russia’s Samara region, Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev on Saturday. He did not give further details, but the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement that it had hit major oil refineries in both cities. It also said its attack had sparked fires at the Vystosk oil facility in Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region and an oil refinery in southern Krasnodar, the outbreak of which was later confirmed by Russian officials.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces destroyed 258 Ukrainian warplanes overnight in 16 Russian regions, as well as the Ukrainian peninsula connected to Crimea and the Black and Azov seas.