Clashes & arrests across Belarus as post-election turmoil enters 3rd night (VIDEOS)

Belarusians angry with the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election, which the opposition denounced as rigged, have taken to streets for the third night in a row, facing off against police deployed en masse to quell the unrest.

Arrests have been reported as law enforcement moved to disperse protesters in the Belarusian capital, which has been gripped by violence since it was announced that the incumbent President Aleksandr Lukashenko was reelected with 80 percent of the vote.

Loud bangs have rung out in Serebrianka borough of Minsk, as law enforcement clashed with demonstrators who attempted to block the roads with makeshift barricades earlier in the day.

Similar scene played out at Kamennaya Gorka, in the outskirts of the city. Sounds of explosions were heard in the neighborhood as riot police scuffled with opposition supporters.

The protests have been marred by violence from both sides, but videos documenting local law enforcement’s crackdown on protesters have quickly gone viral.

One of the most chilling episodes captured on video showed a police officer apparently threatening to detonate a grenade in order to deter bystanders from interfering with the arrest of a young man.

As the Belarusian capital descended into chaos, there have been multiple reports of foreign and local journalists falling victim to the heavy-handed tactics by the law enforcement.

In an incident on Tuesday, AP news agency photographer Sergei Grits was reported to be attacked by a group of uniformed men without insignia, who were quoted threatening to break his camera. The apparent law enforcement officers also seized a memory stick from a local journalist as they swooped on the group.

Protests have swept through other Belarusian cities as well. Footage from Brest, near the border with Poland, showed demonstrators attacking riot police using pepper spray. 

Opposition supporters took to the streets after Lukashenko’s landslide was announced,  claiming that his main rival and united opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was robbed of victory. She officially received 10 percent of the vote.

The first two days of riots saw one person killed, dozens wounded and more than 5,000 arrested. Police have used tear gas, flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, while the protestors were tossing stones and Molotov cocktails at law enforcement. There were also videos of officers being rammed by cars.

On Tuesday, Tikhanovskaya addressed her supporters from Lithuania – where she arrived overnight – asking them to “not to go out on to the squares… not to risk your lives.” She insisted that leaving Belarus was her own decision and she wasn’t pressured by authorities to do so. Lukashenko earlier claimed that the post-election protests were masterminded from abroad, blaming Poland, the UK and Czech Republic. Warsaw and Prague have denied the accusations.

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