Sawt Falasteen - At least 6 killed after gunman opens fire in Ukrainian capital

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that at least 14 people were hospitalised with wounds and trauma after the shooting and hostage-taking, which took place in a residential district in the city's south.

"He was holding hostages and, unfortunately, killed one of them. He killed four people right on the street. Another woman died in the hospital from severe injuries," Zelensky said on social media, adding that four hostages from the supermarket "have been rescued".

"The attacker has been eliminated," he said, offering condolences to the victims' families.

An AFP reporter saw the supermarket -- which had blood stains on its shop window -- cordoned off by a heavy security presence, with officers wearing bulletproof vests and crime investigators arriving at the scene.

An employee of the supermarket, Tetyana, told AFP that she had heard sounds "in the store, like champagne being popped or balloons bursting several times. Then the customers started shouting, 'Run!'".

"There's a spot where you can hide behind the refrigerators, and we ran there. I heard a man moaning," she recounted, her voice trembling.

Footage posted by the UNIAN news agency, which AFP was unable to immediately verify, showed a man carrying a gun and shooting at a person from close range near a block of flats.

The assailant's motive was not immediately known.

- 40-minute standoff -

Zelensky urged "a swift investigation" into the shooting and said that all the circumstances of the incident were being established.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said the standoff between the assailant and police negotiators at the supermarket lasted around 40 minutes.

"We tried to persuade him. Realising that there was likely an injured person inside, we offered to bring in tourniquets to stop the bleeding. But he didn't respond," Klymenko told reporters at the scene.

"That's why the order was given to eliminate him," he added.

The man is also suspected of having set fire to his apartment near the supermarket, according to the authorities.

"I called the fire department as soon as I saw smoke coming out of the apartment," Lyubym Gleyevyi, 24, who lives on the floor just above, told AFP. "We had come home five minutes earlier; it's a miracle we didn’t run into him," he said.

Fellow neighbour Ganna Kulyk said that he spoke very little and had been living in that apartment "for 10 years".

The prosecutor's office confirmed it had opened a terrorism investigation into the incident and that the suspect was a man born in Moscow in 1968.

Interior ministry spokeswoman Mariana Reva however told AFP that "so far there is no confirmation that he had Russian citizenship".

Ukraine, which has been fighting a more than four-year-long war with Russia, has seen sporadic shooting incidents but has a relatively low crime rate.

Last year, a man shot dead two people in a Kyiv suburb in a dispute over the sale of a firearm.

I.Saadi--SF-PST