Military hospital seized in Crimea’s Simferopol: Ukraine

Ukraine says gunmen have seized a military hospital in Simferopol, the administrative center of Ukraine’s autonomous Crimea region.

In a statement issued on Monday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said dozens of members of the self-defense forces took over the hospital in Simferopol.

“On March 10, about 20 violent people from the … Crimean people’s self-defense broke into the territory of the military hospital in Simferopol,” the statement reads.

The ministry also said the men took the military hospital’s chief out and locked the medical staff inside the building.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State Border Guards said they prevented over 300 Russian citizens from crossing the border on suspicion that they sought to cause more chaos in the Eastern European country.

The border guards’ website said they did not allow people to cross the border with provocative symbols and items that could be used to cause injuries.

Moscow recently sent hundreds of its forces to Crimea after the Russian parliament authorized President Vladimir Putin earlier this month to use armed forces “to protect Russia’s interests in that region.”

Political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November last year, when the country’s then president, Victor Yanukovych, refrained from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.

The Ukrainian parliament removed Yanukovych from power in February and named Oleksandr Turchynov, the legislature’s speaker, as the former Soviet state’s interim president.