Kiev (AFP)

The Ukrainian Minister of Health has decided to join in quarantine people evacuated from China due to the new coronavirus, their arrival in Ukraine having caused panic and violence in the small town to welcome them.

"We keep saying that Ukraine is Europe," said President Volodymyr Zelensky, who denounced the incidents, on Friday. "Yesterday, at times, it unfortunately seemed that we were Europe of the Middle Ages".

Residents of Novi Sanjary clashed with police on Thursday to oppose the arrival in a military hospital of this locality in central Ukraine of 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreigners, mostly from Latin America.

"I have decided to join the people under observation. I will spend the next 14 days with them, in the same building and under the same conditions. I hope that my presence will calm (the inhabitants) of Novi Sanjary and the rest of the country "said Minister Zoriana Skaletska on Facebook overnight from Thursday to Friday.

However, the director of the hospital said on Friday that the minister had left the premises but was to return. Questioned by AFP, the press service of the ministry affirmed that the person in charge "had not left the enclosure of the hospital".

In armored vehicles, hundreds of riot police were deployed to the scene on Thursday to respond to the protests.

In the evening, they had to repel the demonstrators in order to clear the road to the hospital. Under police protection, the buses carrying the evacuees, some of whom had their windows broken by stone jets, managed to enter the grounds of the medical center in the evening.

Many Ukrainians expressed their outrage and support for evacuees on the violence on social media. "It seems that the sick are not those" who were evacuated "but those in the streets with stones," protested journalist Olga Tanasiïtchouk.

Some even brought fruit and other food to the front of the hospital, local journalists said.

- "Provocations" to "sow panic" -

Nine police and one resident were injured in the clashes, police spokesman Oksana Blychtchyk told AFP. Among the police, five were still in hospital on Friday.

A total of 24 people were arrested, but almost all were released immediately, according to Blychtchyk.

The Interior Ministry said it had tightened security in the town of some 10,000 residents, adding that about 400 police were patrolling the hospital, although calm returned on Friday.

Two criminal proceedings against X, for "massive disturbances" and "threat or violence against the police", were opened, the police said.

The evacuees embarked in Wuhan, the Chinese metropolis at the heart of the epidemic due to the new coronavirus. Their plane landed in Kharkiv, one of the largest cities closest to Novi Sanjary. The Ministry of Health had assured that no person showing symptoms of illness had been admitted on board.

President Zelensky also telephoned a young compatriot who could not be evacuated from Wuhan because she refused to abandon her dog who did not have the necessary documents, promising to help her return to her country, according to her service. hurry.

Ukrainian security services (SBU) on Thursday called attention to "false information" about cases of coronavirus in Ukraine. According to the SBU, emails sent "from abroad" with a forged signature from the Ministry of Health disseminated this information in particular.

No case of coronavirus has been recorded in Ukraine, located between Russia and the European Union, but its largely failing public health system could be ill-prepared for the challenge of the new infection, which heightens the fears of Ukrainians.

Demonstrations had already taken place in several localities in the west of the country when the authorities said they had selected four reception sites, without revealing their location.

Some of the protests were "political" in nature, President Zelensky said on Friday, as his prime minister predicted further "provocations" linked to the coronavirus and aimed at "causing panic" in the country.

© 2020 AFP