In Ukraine protesters attack buses carrying evacuees from coronavirus hit China

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In a bizzare show of events dozens of protesters in a Ukrainian town attacked buses carrying evacuees from coronavirus-hit China.

The evacuees were brought to a health spa in Novi Sanzhary, in the central Poltava region, where they will be held in quarantine for 14 days, BBC reported.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the protesters to show empathy.

Ukraine’s security service (SBU) said a fake email claiming to be from the health ministry falsely said some evacuees had contracted the virus.

SBU officials are now investigating the apparent hoax, a statement said.

Ukraine has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, which originated last year in China’s Hubei province.

To show solidarity with the evacuees, Ukraine’s Health Minister Zoryana Skaletska on Friday joined them in quarantine and said she would run her ministry by Skype and phone.

“I hope that my presence there will calm those in Novi Sanzhary, as well as the rest of the country,” she wrote in a Facebook post (in Ukrainian).

On Thursday, 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals were flown from Wuhan in China, the epicentre of the deadly outbreak, to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.

Six buses then drove them to the health spa in Novi Sanzhary, where they were met by demonstrators lighting bonfires and hurling stones.

Armoured personnel carriers were seen deployed in the small town.

After a tense stand-off, police and the national guard managed to unblock the road to the building where the evacuees would be spending 14 days.

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