Activists of Hefajat-e Islam chase policemen during a clash in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, yesterday. Police broke up protests by tens of thousands of religious hardliners and shut down Islamist television stations as 37 people died in some of the fiercest street violence in decades.
DHAKA: Bangladeshi police broke up a new protest by tens of thousands of religious hardliners and shut down Islamist television stations yesterday as 36 people died in some of the fiercest street violence for decades.
Hundreds more were injured in running battles as riot police broke up the rally near a commercial district in a pre-dawn raid in the capital Dhaka.
Dozens of demonstrators were also arrested, while the leader of the protests was put on a plane to the country’s second city Chittagong.
Hundreds of bankers and stock market traders had to sleep in their offices as the sound of gunfire echoed around Dhaka’s Motijheel Commercial Area through the night.
Shops and vehicles were set alight while the roads were littered with rocks that protesters had thrown at police, witnesses said.
Police said they used sound grenades, water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse at least 70,000 Islamists who were camped at Motijheel as part of a push for a blasphemy law.
“We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their gathering at Motijheel. They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks,” Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman said. The protesters dispersed early yesterday, he added.
Mozammel Haq, a police inspector at Dhaka Medical College Hospital said that 11 bodies were brought to the clinic, including a policeman who had been hacked in the head with machetes.
A total of 25 other people were killed in the protests, according to an AFP toll compiled through police and medical officials.
This included eight people killed in the Kanchpur district on the outskirts of Dhaka, said the sources.
Violence also flared up at Hathazari, a town just outside Chittagong, where local police chief Liaqot Ali said at least four people were killed after several thousand Islamists clashed with police and border guards.
And at least two people were killed in the southern coastal district of Bagerhat where police exchanged gunfire with Islamists, police spokesman Shah Alam said. Two pro-Islamist television stations which broadcast footage of the raid on Motijheel were forced off the air, journalists at the channels said.
The plug was pulled on Diganta Television and Islamic TV as dozens of plain-clothes policemen stormed into their offices.
The violence erupted Sunday afternoon after police tried to break a blockade of highways leading into Dhaka.
The protests had been instigated by Allama Shah Ahmad Shafi, the leader of Hefajat-e-Islam who is said to be around 90 years old.
Police managed to persuade Shafi on Monday to leave his madrassa (religious school) in Dhaka, escorting him to the airport from where he was flown to Chittagong. AFP
