Bangladesh’s main opposition leader was yesterday detained for questioning, as clashes raged for a second day between police and protesters demonstrating against the prime minister ahead of elections.
Police also raided the homes of senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders, party spokesman Zahir Uddin Swapan said, adding that nearly 3,000 party activists and supporters had been detained in the past week.
BNP secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir had been “detained for interrogation,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Habibur Rahman said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Alamgir would be questioned over Saturday’s violence in which a police officer and a protester were killed, and at least 26 police ambulances were torched or damaged, Rahman said.
Alamgir, 75, has led the party since BNP chairwoman and two-time former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia was arrested and jailed, and her son went into exile in the UK.
The resurgent opposition has been mounting protests for months, despite an ailing Zia being effectively under house arrest after a conviction on corruption charges.
Saturday’s protests by BNP and the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, were among the biggest this year, and marked a new phase in their campaigning with a general election due before the end of January.
More than 100,000 supporters of the two major opposition parties rallied on Saturday to demand that bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down to allow a free and fair vote under a neutral government.
Protests descended into several hours of violent clashes in central Dhaka, and the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami called for a nationwide strike yesterday to protest the violence.
Security was tight in the capital yestrday, with thousands of members of security forces patrolling the streets.
However, police in the northern district of Lalmonirhat said a ruling party youth leader was killed and several others injured during violent clashes between hundreds of opposition and ruling party supporters.
“He was rushed to a hospital where he died,” local police chief Ershadul Alam said.
Police accused protesters of setting fire to a bus in Dhaka in the early hours of yesterday morning, after a blaze in which one person was killed and another badly burned.
Opposition activists and police clashed in several rural districts as well as the industrial city of Narayanganj, police said.
Officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the protesters after they burned tires on a road and tried to vandalize vehicles, district police chief Golan Mostofa Russell said.
One officer was injured, police said, while local media reported that two BNP protesters were also injured.
Violence has sparked international concern, with the United States on Saturday calling for “calm and restraint on all sides.”
The EU yesterday wrote on social media platform X that it was “vital that a peaceful way forward for participatory and peaceful elections is found.”
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