A nervous taxi driver, heavily-armed riot police, gunfire, dead bodies, crying... Getting from airport to hotel in central Kiev, where clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces rage, is a risky endeavor.

"Enjoy your stay," the pilot says as the airplane lands at Kiev's Boryspil airport on Thursday morning under a low-hanging grey sky and passengers -- many of them journalists -- file out of the near-empty aircraft.

The White House said Thursday it was "outraged" that Ukrainian forces had turned automatic weapons on demonstrators as a short-lived truce shattered in Kiev.

In a statement, White House press secretary Jay Carney called for the withdrawal of government forces from the front lines in the Ukrainian capital, but did not specify what consequences there would be from Washington after its previous, repeated calls for an end to violence were ignored.

As fighting rages all around him on Kiev's Independence Square, a volunteer medic tears open a young protester's bloodstained T-shirt and desperately pumps his chest as the patient's grey face stares into the sky.

Nearby, protesters scream wildly for people to clear a path for a stretcher carrying a man's covered body. A helmet lies on his chest. His arm dangles down lifelessly.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday to accept EU help in his talks with the opposition and condemned the latest violence.

Merkel spoke by phone with Yanukovych as fierce clashes in Kiev claimed at least 27 lives, just as EU envoys were holding crisis talks with the embattled president.

The European Union will look at a possible ban on the sale of anti-riot equipment and arms to Ukraine as well as other sanctions at talks in Brussels on Thursday.

A draft statement seen by Agence France Presse that is to be finalized by the bloc's 28 foreign ministers at emergency talks scheduled for 1400 GMT says that the EU "is gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine."

Britain hauled in the Ukrainian ambassador to London on Thursday for the second time in two days over the violence in Kiev that has claimed at least another 27 lives.

Following renewed deadly clashes earlier Thursday, Europe Minister David Lidington summoned Volodymyr Khandogiy to the Foreign Office over what it called the "shocking violence in Ukraine".

More than 60 protesters died from gunshot wounds on Thursday in fresh clashes between thousands of demonstrators and heavily-armed riot police in the heart of Kiev, a medic who works with the opposition said.

"More than 60 protesters died today. They all have gunshot wounds," the EuroMiadan Medical Center coordinator Svyatoslav Khanenko told Agence France Presse.

The United States has imposed visa bans on about 20 senior Ukrainian officials accused of backing the deadly repression of protesters in Kiev, a U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

The move came in response to violent pitch battles that killed 26 people on Tuesday amid apocalyptic scenes that left parts of Kiev's historic city center engulfed in flames.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned of "consequences" over the violence in Ukraine and said it held the government responsible for ensuring that its people can protest "without fear of repression."

"We hold the Ukrainian government primarily responsible for making sure that it is dealing with peaceful protesters in an appropriate way, that the Ukrainian people are able to assemble and speak freely about their interests without fear of repression," Obama said during a visit to Mexico.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a phone call to his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for the European Union to encourage the opposition to cooperate with the authorities.

Steinmeier is heading to Ukraine on Thursday with the French and Polish foreign ministers before emergency talks among EU ministers in Brussels.