At least two people were killed and dozens hurt across Bangladesh on Sunday when police and ruling party activists clashed with opposition protesters.
Police and witnesses said supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, and its allies set ablaze about 30 buses, trucks and cars in the capital Dhaka and other parts of the country.
Demonstrators threw scores of small hand-made bombs, burnt tyres and vehicles.
“We are trying to contain the battles between activists and police, which has prevented movement of vehicles and forced residents from the streets,” a police officer said.
Police in the capital arrested about 50 people for using violence, Masudur Rahman, Dhaka police spokesman, said.
About 10,000 police were deployed to try to keep highways open in the country, but officials said traffic on many roads grounded to a halt, including the highway from Dhaka to the main port of Chittagong.
“We allowed peaceful protests. But once they started attacking cars and buses and throwing cocktail bombs, we used non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them,” Imtiaz Ahmed, deputy police commissioner of Dhaka, said.
Police said one person died in a knife attack as protesters from the main opposition BNP and supporters of the ruling Awami League party clashed in the old part of Dhaka.
A second man was killed in the northwestern town of Enayetpur, the police said.
Constitutional amendment
Police also clashed with protesters in the cities of Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet. In the northern town of Palashbari security forces fired non-lethal shots at hundreds of protesters blocking a road, officials said.
The BNP called for Sunday’s blockade to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to restore a system of holding parliamentary elections under a non-party caretaker administration, instead of it being supervised by the party in power.
The BNP and allies including Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic party, want the caretaker system to be re-instated to guard against what they say would be an attempt by Hasina’s party to rig the election results.
Hasina government over-ruled the caretaker provision in a constitutional amendment last year.
The two women, both in their mid-60s and who have served two terms each as the country’s leader, are likely to face each other again in the next election due by end of 2013.
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