Extremists claim rush-hour blast

Associated Press

DONETSK, Ukraine — ProRussian forces in eastern Ukraine on Saturday prepared to celebrate Orthodox Easter at barricades outside government offices seized in nearly a dozen cities, despite an international agreement to disarm and free the premises.

In Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, a co-chairman of the self-appointed Donetsk People’s Republic, which is demanding broader regional powers and closer ties to Russia, vowed that insurgents will continue occupying government offices until the new proWestern Kiev government is dismissed.

“We will leave only after the Kiev junta leaves,” Pushilin told the Associated Press outside the occu- pied regional administration building. “First Kiev, then Donetsk.”

Nearby, retiree Ksenia Shuleyko, 65, was handing out pieces of homemade Easter raisin cake, traditionally served for Orthodox Easter. Speaking from a red tent, decorated with a red hammer-and-sickle Soviet Union flag, Shuleyko expressed hope that Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula last month, would also wield influence in the Donetsk region near the border with Russia, known as the Donbass.

“We believe in Russia. It helped Crimea, it will also help the Donbass,” Shuleyko said. “God will help those who believe and we do believe.” Moments later, she performed a patriotic Soviet-era song together with other dem- onstrators and could not contain tears.

The Easter preparations and fortification efforts come two days after top diplomats from Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union issued a statement calling for an array of actions including the disarming of militant groups and the freeing of public buildings taken over by insurgents.

Those terms quickly became a heated issue as pro-Russian armed groups that have seized police stations and other government buildings in eastern Ukraine said they wouldn’t vacate unless the country’s acting government resigned.

The Kiev authorities took power after pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February.

LAGOS — Islamic extremists Saturday claimed responsibility for the massive rush-hour explosion last week that ripped through a busy bus station in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, killing at least 75 people and wounding 141.

“We are in your city, but you don’t know where we are,” Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Boko Haram terrorist network, says in