Six killed in Kiev shooting and hostage crisis: Police kill suspect

Ukrainian police have shot dead a man suspected of shooting at passersby in a part of Kiev on Monday, then barricading himself in a supermarket with hostages and refusing to negotiate, in an incident that left six people dead, Reuters reports.

Ukraine's Security Service said the shooting was being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening video address that the shooting took place in the green Holosiivskyi district and that 14 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy.

"He took hostages and, unfortunately, one of them was killed. Four people died in the middle of the street. One woman died in hospital from serious injuries," Zelensky said.

Reuters reports that such shootings are extremely rare in Ukraine.

Footage from the scene showed emergency crews loading at least one body into a vehicle.

Unofficial Telegram channels reported witness statements saying that the suspect was moving down the street and, without warning, shooting and killing people at close range before entering the supermarket.

"The attacker from Kiev was liquidated during the arrest. Special forces of the National Police stormed the store where the attacker was. During the attempted arrest, he took hostages and shot a police officer. Before that, negotiators tried to contact him," Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko wrote on Telegram.

Klimenko told reporters at the scene that police officers tried to negotiate with the suspect for 40 minutes without success. He said the man had a registered weapon and had obtained a medical certificate for its use.

Chief Prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko said the attacker was identified as a 58-year-old man originally from Moscow.

Zelensky said the suspect had a criminal record and had set fire to an apartment at the address he was registered to before going out onto the street with a weapon.

The Ukrainian president added that he had lived for some time in the eastern Donetsk region, one of the main flashpoints of the four-year war with Russia.

Kravchenko said the suspect was brandishing an automatic weapon.

He posted a photo showing a blurred figure lying in blood inside a store, with a weapon nearby.

The mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitali Klitschko, previously said that the suspect had killed two people, and then stated that there were also deaths inside the store.

Klitschko also said earlier that a man opened fire in a part of Kiev today, killing two people and wounding five, and that police were trying to arrest him in a supermarket, Reuters reported.

"A special operation is underway to detain the man who started the shooting and is currently inside the supermarket. According to medical personnel, two people have died so far in the Holosiivskyi district," Klitschko wrote on Telegram earlier today.

Klitschko then said that the shooting was continuing inside the supermarket.