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Updated: Jun 27, 2017 16:16 IST

A suspected car bombing in Kiev on Tuesday killed a Ukrainian military intelligence officer in an incident classified as a “terrorist act” by police, officials said.

Police said the explosion tore through a Mercedes car several kilometres from the heart of the Ukrainian capital, killing the driver and leaving charred remains of the vehicle.

The blast is the latest deadly incident to rock the city, as crisis-hit Ukraine battles a bloody Russian-backed insurgency in its eastern regions.

Ukraine’s defence ministry named the victim as Colonel Maksym Shapoval and said he was an employee of the military’s “main intelligence directorate.”

Interior ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko said that judging by initial indications it appeared “obvious” that the blast was caused by an explosive device, adding that investigators were probing it as terrorism.

“At the present time the picture gathered of the crime suggests it was a planned terrorist act,” Shevchenko said.

In early June a Ukrainian volunteer commander originally from the Russian region of Chechnya, who had once been jailed on suspicion of plotting to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shot and seriously wounded by a would-be assassin.

In March former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov turned Kremlin critic was shot dead in central Kiev.

Last year high-profile independent journalist Pavel Sheremet was also killed in a car bombing in central Kiev.

There have also been a string of assassinations of rebel leaders in the war-torn east of the country that the insurgents have blamed on Kiev but Ukraine’s government has pinned on infighting among the separatists.