Deadly blast rocks Kharkiv march 

KYIV – Officials in Ukraine said they have detained four Ukrainian citizens in connection with an explosion in the eastern city of Kharkiv that left four dead and 11 injured. Police say the people killed in the February 22 explosion were a police officer, Vadim Rybalchenko, and a civilian, Ihor Tolmachev; two more fatalities were 15-year-old Danylo Didyk and 18-year-old Mykola Melnychuk, who died of their injuries in the hospital. Four of the wounded were also police officers. Oleksandr Turchynov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said a counterterrorism operation has been launched in Kharkiv in response to the incident. The bomb struck a peace march that was being held to mark the first anniversary of the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych. An official with Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was quoted as saying the four people who were detained “underwent instruction and received weapons” in the Russian city of Belgorod. A Kharkiv prosecutor was quoted by Interfax as saying the bomb was “filled with shrapnel.” A local SBU official said a similar weapon had been located and disarmed in Kharkiv on February 19. “Today is memorial Sunday, but on this day the terrorist evil revealed its predatory nature,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Facebook. A minute of silence was observed in Kharkiv on February 23 in honor of those who died and were wounded in the explosion. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Interfax)