Five dead as opposition strike grips Bangladesh

The strike aims to force PM Sheikh Hasina to step down.

DHAKA: At least five people were killed in nationwide clashes and trains were attacked as Bangladesh’s opposition on Sunday began a strike to demand the prime minister to quit and make way for polls under a caretaker government.

Police said officers opened fire at protesters in the western town of Nagarkanda after some 3,000 supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ransacked a rural market and attacked police with bricks.

One opposition activist was killed in the firing and five were wounded.

Four other people were killed elsewhere as the three-day strike got under way.

In Dhaka opposition supporters torched buses and exploded more than a dozen home-made bombs, while police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets. Shops, businesses and schools were shut for fear of the violence.

The opposition parties ordered the strike after last-minute talks between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and opposition leader Khaleda Zia late on Saturday failed to defuse the mounting crisis.

Zia rejected Hasina’s appeal to call off the strike during a 40-minute phone conversation -- believed to be the first time in at least a decade that the two ‘battling begums’ have spoken.

The opposition has called the strike and protests in a bid to force Hasina’s government to resign ahead of elections due in January 2014, and set up a caretaker administration of technocrats to oversee the polls.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 28^th, 2013.