Seven dead in Bangla vote protest

DHAKA: Bangladesh opposition supporters blocked roads and ripped up railway tracks yesterday in protests against elections announced for January, leaving seven people dead and plunging the nation into fresh turmoil.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist allies called a 48-hour nationwide transport blockade to press their demand for a suspension of the January 5 poll date announced on Monday.
The BNP has urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and make way for a neutral caretaker government to oversee the elections, and has been staging violent protests and strikes around the country to back its demand.
Hasina’s government rejected the demand and the Chief Elections Commissioner pushed ahead with setting the date, urging parties to join the contest for the 300-seat parliament.
Hundreds of opposition protesters took to the streets around the country after the announcement, and clashes resumed yesterday with police, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and in some cases live rounds.
“We fired rifles after about 500 protesters attacked us with home-made guns and small bombs,” Abul Khaer, a police official in Comilla, said. Three people were killed in separate clashes in Comilla including a border patrol trooper shot dead by protesters.
A BNP official was shot dead by officers in Shahjahanpur. A protester drowned in Sirajganj after he jumped into a pond to escape tear gas. Two ruling party officials were beaten to death in Satkhira by supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Train services have been “paralysed” with hundreds of demonstrators uprooting tracks and sleepers, setting fire to coaches and blocking lines.
“There are at least 60 incidents of train obstructions including attacking trains with stones and blockades of rail lines,” Bangladesh Railway’s traffic director Syed Zahur Hossain said and added that major services between Dhaka and the cities of Chittagong and Sylhet were halted. AFP