Masked attackers shot BD uprising leader

DHAKA:

Bangladesh's interim government said it would fly a leader of the 2024 uprising, a candidate in upcoming elections, for treatment in Singapore after he was critically wounded in an assassination attempt.

Masked attackers shot student leader Sharif Osman Hadi on Friday as he left a mosque in the capital Dhaka, wounding him in the ear.

The shooting took place one day after authorities announced a date for the first elections since the student-led uprising that overthrew the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina.

In a statement late Sunday, the interim government said it will pay for Hadi to "be flown to Singapore for better treatment", and that an "air ambulance and a team of doctors are on standby."

Hadi is a senior leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha and has been an outspoken critic of India -- Hasina's old ally where the ousted prime minister remains in self-imposed exile.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Dhaka on Monday to condemn the shooting.

"It's an attack on our political solidarity," Gazi Sadia, a 21-year-old student, told AFP.

Hadi's Inqilab Mancha was represented at the rally alongside supports of Bangaldesh's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the National Citizen Party (NCP), which was formed by others students who spearheaded last year's uprising.

Police said they had launched a manhunt for the attackers who shot Hadi, releasing photographs of two key suspects and offering a reward of five million taka (about $42,000) for information leading to their arrest.

Dhaka police spokesman Muhammad Talebur Rahman also said that "border security has been put on high alert."