Mourning and protests in Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine - Thousands of Ukrainians chanted "Hero!" and sang the national anthem Sunday, as a coffin carrying a protester who was killed in last week's clashes with police was borne through the streets of the capital, underscoring the rising tensions in the country's two-month-old political crisis.

Mikhail Zhiznevsky, 25, was one of three protesters who died in clashes Wednesday.

"He could have been my fiancé, but he died defending my future so that I will live in a different Ukraine," said Nina Uvarov, 25, a student from Kiev who wept as Zhiznevsky's body was carried out of St. Michael's Cathedral.

Zhiznevsky's body was carried to Independence Square in central Kiev, where protesters have established a large tent camp and held demonstrations around the clock since early December. Zhiznevsky was killed at barricades near the Ukrainian parliament.

Crowds shouted "Yanukovych is a murderer!" and "Down with the criminal," a reference to Yanukovych's run-ins with the law during his youth.

The opposition contends Zhiznevsky and another activist were shot by police in an area where demonstrators had been throwing rocks and firebombs at riot police for several days. The government claims the two were killed with hunting rifles, which they say police do not carry. The authorities would not say how the third protester died.

Meanwhile, protests against President Viktor Yanukovych continued to engulf the country and began to spread to central and eastern Ukraine, the leader's support base.

In Dnipropetrovsk, 240 miles southeast of Kiev on the Dnipro River, several hundred demonstrators tried to storm a local administration building, but police drove them back with water sprayed from a fire truck in subfreezing temperatures, the Interfax news agency reported.

In Zaporozhets, about 45 miles down river, demonstrators gathered outside the city administration building.

And in Kiev, protesters seized the Justice Ministry building Sunday night, adding another government building to the several already occupied by the opposition.

The protests began in late November after Yanukovych shelved a long-awaited agreement to deepen ties with the European Union, but they have been increasingly gripped by people seeking more radical action, even as moderate opposition leaders have pleaded for the violence to end.

About half of Ukraine's people favored deeper integration with the EU, according to polls, and many Ukrainians widely resent Russia's long influence over the country.