At least 2 dead in in Ukraine sports club attack

But officials have questioned the need to hold arms in western Ukraine, thousands of kilometres from the east, where fighting has killed more than 6,500 people and forced more than 1.5 million to abandon their homes.

Female Grevy’s zebra born at Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago, first since 1998.

The violence in the city of Mukhachevo, near the Polish and Hungarian borders, broke out at a sports facility reportedly controlled by a national parliament member from a faction opposed to Right Sector.

The Right Sector’s representatives said two of the group’s fighters were killed and four injured. Police had surrounded a few gunmen in a wooded area of Mukacheve and were trying to negotiate their peaceful surrender, a statement from the regional prosecutor’s office said.

Right Sector activists replaced European Union flags at the Lviv administration with their own red and black banners, local news outlet Podrobnosti.ua reported.

Senior separatist figure Eduard Bassurin, meanwhile, said shots “fired by the Ukrainian army” killed a rebel and a civilian.

Several officials and analysts said the clash could be part of a “turf war” between the deputy, Mikhail Lanyo, and local members of Right Sector over control of cigarette smuggling that is worth millions of euro each year.

The neonazi group, which played a central role in the Euromaidan protests that led to the coup in Kiev against president Viktor Yanukovych, has issued a list of five demands.

“We have two battalions in the conflict zone but in the whole of Ukraine we have 18 or 19 reserve battalions”, said Right Sector spokesman Artyom Skoropadsky. However, rights groups including Amnesty worldwide have accused Right Sector fighters of being involved in extrajudicial detention and torture.

The Russian foreign ministry’s envoy for human rights, Konstantin Dolgov, seized on Saturday’s events to renew the criticism.

Combat operations in the region of the former Soviet strategic radar station in Mukachevo have already forced “the Right Sector” to evacuate its battalions from Donbass front to new civil confrontation fronts in Kiev and in the western regions.

Also Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko charged that a “record number” of Russian troops were deployed at the border with Ukraine, without giving a precise figure.