A man tries to put out a fire in a van after alleged activists of Bangladesh Nationalist Party set fire to it, in Dhaka yesterday.
IANS/Dhaka
Some 100 vehicles across Bangladesh were smashed or set on fire in the early hours of a 48-hour strike yesterday demanding release of opposition men detained in a recent police raid on their party headquarters.
In capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the South Asian country, where strike has become a very common phenomenon in the recent months, scores of cocktails and handmade bombs were exploded, leaving dozens of people including opposition men and law enforcers injured, some critically.
Riot police shot rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas shells to disperse stone throwing opposition activists who attempted to block roads and bring out procession along the major city streets, disrupting traffic, Xinhua reported.
Police detained dozens of opposition alliance men as they locked horns in chase and counter-chase with the law enforcers.
The strike crippled the normal life and business transactions to large extent with many main markets and educational
institutions closed.
More than 1,000 trucks laden with cargo meant for ready-made garment export items stranded on their ways to the premier Chittagong seaport, some 242km southeast of capital Dhaka, local television channels reported.
On account of the strike, private cars were rarely seen on Dhaka roads but a large number of cycle-rickshaws appeared in the usually bustling streets along with the presence of public transport including city buses.
Many seem preferred to keep their vehicles in garages as at least 20 vehicles were also reportedly set on fire and 40 damaged across Bangladesh in pre-strike violence on Sunday. In an incident in Dhaka, three doctors were injured as miscreants hurled a bomb at their car on Sunday night.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) leaders and activists were seen bringing out anti-strike procession and stay on many Dhaka streets.
Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) standing committee at an emergency meeting hours after the raid last week threatened the government with more strikes on March 18 and 19, if it did not release the detained opposition leaders by Thursday.
A total of 154 main opposition men including dozens of leaders, who were detained during a raid on their headquarters last Monday night, were sent to jail Tuesday in connection with two assault cases against them.
Police raided (BNP) headquarters less than an hour after the party announced countrywide dawn-to-dusk strike for today to protest at what it said government’s corruption, misrule, oppression and “mass killings”.
At least 76 people including several police men and dozens of Jamaat leaders and activists were killed and hundreds of others injured in the riots erupted since a tribunal awarded death sentence to the Jamaat’s vice president Delwar Hosssain Sayeede for war crimes in 1971 on February 28.
Political tension in Bangladesh heightened in December after the 18-party opposition alliance, which have already dismissed the court as a government “show trial”, geared up anti-government agitation programmes, demanding restoration of the non-party caretaker government system to hold parliamentary elections slated for early 2014.
Since June 2011 when Bangladesh parliament abolished the non-party caretaker government system after an apex court verdict declared the 15-year-old constitutional provision illegal, the BNP-led alliance has been waging mass protests demanding for the reinstatement of the provision.
The scrapped provision mandated an elected government to transfer power to an unelected non-partisan caretaker administration to oversee a new parliamentary election on the completion of its term.