THE DEATH toll in Monday’s rioting in the Ukrainian capital Kiev rose to three yesterday, with some 140 hospitalised.

Two National Guard officers died of their injuries in hospital yesterday, in addition to one killed on Monday.

The riot began when members of the far-right Svoboda party clashed with troops in riot gear outside the Verkhovna Rada or parliament as MPs voted on a Bill granting greater autonomy to regions in the Russian-speaking east of the country.

Later yesterday Oleh Lyashko’s right-wing Radical Party, the fifth largest in parliament, said it was splitting from the government over the new legislation.

In an apparent repeat of the Maidan Square demonstrations nearly two years ago, Svoboda thugs attacked troops with poles, firebombs, grenades and guns.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said that a grenade launcher and several grenades had been seized, including a high-powered F1 type with a lethal radius of 30 metres.

Mr Avakov wrote on Facebook that at least one of the National Guard troops killed had been shot with a firearm.

“There’s one killed — a gunshot wound to the heart… we thought it was shrapnel — but it turns out someone used the confusion to shoot,” he wrote.

The Health Ministry also said that guns were used in the clashes, reporting 21 gunshot wounds.

About 30 rioters were detained, of whom 18 remained in custody yesterday, including the man suspected of throwing the grenade.

Mr Avakov said the culprit was a Svoboda member who fought in the east in one of the volunteer battalions, which are loosely controlled by the government.

Some journalists wrote on social networking site Twitter that members of the neonazi Right Sector group were also among the rioters.

The group itself wrote on its Facebook page that “the blood of Ukrainian patriots was spilled near the Verkhovna Rada.”

The Communist Party of Ukraine yesterday reiterated comments by Serbian political analyst Aleksander Pavic that the unrest is part of a US agenda to keep Ukraine as an unstable “failed state” on Russia’s border.

In the eastern Donbass region, Kiev regime officials and anti-fascist forces said a new ceasefire — part of the Minsk peace agreement — was holding despite sporadic exchanges of gunfire.