Three presidential candidates in Belarus detained

Belarusian police on Sunday arrested three opposition presidential candidates during street battles against thousands protesting against vote fraud, dpa reported.

Nikolai Statkevich, Grigoriy Kostusev, and Andrei Sannikov and his wife all were taken into custody in the wake of a late-evening police charge into a crowd of several thousand.

The three opposition politicians had been leading demonstrations near the Central Election Commission building, and alleging the results of Sunday's presidential election were being falsified to give incumbent President Aleksander Lukashenko an illegal victory.

Police had attacked and arrested a fourth presidential candidate for the opposition earlier in the evening. He was hospitalized with a concussion.