Police Suspect Terrorism After Car Blast Kills One in Central Kiev

Ukraine’s national police force said it had increased security in densely populated areas of Kiev on September 8 after a car bomb detonated in center of the city during the evening rush hour, killing one person.

A woman and a child were also in the car, police said. After a preliminary investigation, police said they were treating the explosion as a suspected terrorist attack.

According to the Kyiv Post citing interior ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko, the woman was seriously injured but the child’s life was not in danger. Shevchenko was also reported to have named the dead driver as Georgian citizen Timur Makhauri. He said Makhauri had connections in Chechnya and was the target of the explosion, reports said.

Pro-western media organizations the Kyiv Post, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and UATV, among others, said Makhauri was described as having been a member of a Ukrainian volunteer battalion that fought pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Storyful was not able to independently verify these claims. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful