'It's like a war': beatings and indiscriminate arrests as armed men roam streets of Minsk

Residents tell how the crackdown on peaceful protests against the Belarus election results has turned a city into a conflict zone

Twenty-three-year-old Danya* was sitting with her brother and his wife in Minsk's Independence Square on Monday, when men dressed in black forced them into a van.

The trio were wearing white ribbons, symbols of resistance to the re-election of Belarus's president, Alexander Lukashenko, which has been widely condemned as fraudulent. The official election results, released the day before and disputed by protesters, showed that Lukashenko took 80.23% of the votes, while .his opposition challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, received only 9.9%.