Military takes control in Bangladesh after Hasina flees

Bangladesh's army chief was due to meet student protest leaders Tuesday, a day after the military took control as mass demonstrations forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to flee the country.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she quit.

Hundreds of people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest, but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled Bangladesh aboard a helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.

Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Monday afternoon on state television that Hasina had resigned and the military would form a caretaker government.

"The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed -- it is time to stop the violence," said Waker, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina's official residence.

Student protest leaders, ahead of the expected meeting with the army chief, said Tuesday they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.

"In Dr. Yunus, we trust," Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.

Yunus has not commented on the call, but in an interview with India's The Print, he said Bangladesh had been "an occupied country" under Hasina.

"Today all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated," Yunus said, it reported.

The president and army chief also met President Mohammed Shahabuddin late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president's press team saying it had been "decided to form an interim government immediately".

Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka to celebrate after Waker's announcement on Monday.

"I feel so happy," said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.

"We have been freed from a dictatorship."

But there were also scenes of chaos and anger, with police reporting at least 109 people killed on Monday, including by mobs who launched revenge attacks on Hasina's allies.

It was the deadliest day since protests began in early July, with at least 409 people killed overall, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.

Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's independence hero.

Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.

"The time has come to make them accountable for torture," said protester Kaza Ahmed. "Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder."

Offices of Hasina's Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.

The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.

Her government was accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

The president on Monday, after meeting the army chief Waker, also ordered the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.

Zia, who is in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.

Mothers of some of the hundreds of political prisoners secretly jailed under Hasina's rule waited outside a military intelligence force building in Dhaka on Tuesday, hoping for news.

"We need answers," said Sanjida Islam Tulee, a coordinator of Mayer Daak, meaning "The Call of the Mothers", a group campaigning for the release of people detained by Hasina's security forces.

Hasina's fate is also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.

Media in neighbouring India reported Hasina had landed at a military airbase near New Delhi.

A top-level source said she wanted to "transit" on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into "unprecedented levels of violence" put that into doubt.

Bangladesh has a long history of coups.

The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, warned that Hasina's departure "would leave a major vacuum" and that the country was in "uncharted territory".

"The coming days are critical," he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a "peaceful, orderly and democratic transition", his spokesman said. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call.

Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged "calm".