World Bulletin / News Desk

A gunman was holding two people hostage at a petrol station in northeast Ukraine on Monday after killing two others, the interior ministry said.

The 48-year-old man opened fire with a rifle, killing the two people in the town of Lyubotin in the Kharkiv region and then drove to the petrol station where he took hostages.

The area is a long way from the conflict zone where government forces are fighting Russian-backed separatists and police seemed to be treating the incident as purely criminal.

"Police officers are currently negotiating the release of the hostages ... and taking steps to apprehend the attacker," the ministry said on its website. It gave no further details.