Riot police carry the body of a protester after he was shot dead during a procession in Bangladesh’s northwestern city of Rajshahi yesterday

An activist of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party died and several others were injured yesterday when party activists clashed with police, a media report said. Four people died in similar clashes on Sunday.
Yesterday’s clash took place in Rajshahi city, along the border with India’s West Bengal state. At least 10 policemen were
injured.
Shafiqul Islam received bullet injuries when police fired at violent protesters of the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, the Daily Star reported.
Police later claimed Islam was shot dead by his own party men.
The 30-year-old Islam was an employee of Islami Bank
Hospital in the city.
To protest the death, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led four-party alliance has called for a six-hour strike in the city today.
CNN said that four people died on Sunday following violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters. Two people died in Chandpur district and two in Laxmipur district.
The opposition had called for anti-government rallies across the country but the government slapped a ban on all gatherings in Dhaka and five other cities - Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna and Barisal.
Bangladesh has a history of violent clashes between political activists, and the BNP has recently enforced a series of strikes in a new wave of unrest.
The South Asian nation of 160mn people witnessed deadly political violence in October 2006 when two major parties announced rallies on the same day, leading to the deaths of at least a half dozen activists.
Opposition anger was fuelled when the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year scrapped a system for overseeing elections.
The next national election is due to be held by early 2014. IANS