A defendant is dead after detonating explosives in a Kyiv court, officials have said.

Two police officers were also hurt when Ihor Humeniuk set off a bomb inside the Shevchenkivskyi District Court as he failed in an escape bid, Ukraine’s interior minister Ihor Klymenko said.

It is not clear how Humeiuk got the explosives or managed to smuggle them into the building.

He had been in custody for eight years on charges of throwing a grenade during a demonstration outside the country’s parliament, killing three members of the National Guard and hurting more than 140 others in 2015.

The officers hurt in Wednesday’s attack belong to a special police unit.