LUTSK: Ukrainian police were holding tense negotiations on Tuesday with a man armed with explosives who took 20 people hostage in a bus and claimed to have planted a remote-controlled device in the western city of Lutsk.

Police cordoned off the centre of the city of over 200,000, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the capital Kiev, and asked residents not to leave their homes or places of work.

The hostage-taker also fired shots at a police drone that flew over the bus and threw an explosive package into the street, deputy interior minister Anton Gerashchenko told AFP.