Pro-Russia activists seize eastern Ukraine police offices

Armed activists seized police buildings in cities across eastern Ukraine on Saturday, as tensions flared between the government in Kiev and pro-Russian separatists, dpa reported. Hundreds of uniformed men occupied the police headquarters in Donetsk, an industrial city where most people speak Russian, and forced the police chief to resign, local authorities said. It followed the storming of a police station and a security services building in Slaviansk, some 100 kilometers north of Donetsk, with the activists demanding a referendum on independence from Kiev. Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said police stations in two other cities in the region - Kramatorsk and Krasny Liman - had been attacked. He said the country's National Security and Defence Council was urgently convening to discuss the unrest, which he blamed on n"external aggression by Russia."