Student protests surge in Bangladesh capital
A strong earthquake struck the Indonesian tourist island of Lombok on Sunday, killing at least three people and shaking neighbouring Bali, one week after another quake on Lombok killed more than a dozen.
The latest quake, which triggered a brief tsunami warning, damaged buildings as far away as Denpasar on Bali, including a department store and the airport terminal, where ceiling panels were shaken loose, authorities said. Video showed screaming people running in panic from houses in a Bali neighbourhood and vehicles rocking. On Lombok, soldiers and other rescuers carried injured people on stretchers and carpets to an evacuation centre.
The quake, recorded at magnitude 7.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey, struck early Sunday evening at a depth of 10.5 kilometres in the northern part of Lombok.
“I was watching TV when I felt a big shake,” said Harian, a Lombok woman who uses one name. “The lamp was shaking and people were shouting ‘Get out.’ I ran out into the dark because the power cut off.”
A tsunami warning was lifted after waves just 15 centimetres high were recorded in three villages, A man walks inside a cathedral where debris has fallen after an earthquake in Bali, Indonesia, on Sunday.
said the head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, Dwikorita Karnawati.
Najmul Akhyar, district chief of North Lombok, told MetroTV there was an electrical blackout so he was unable to assess the entire situation, but that at least three people had been killed.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the quake was felt strongly across Lombok and Bali and had damaged
houses on both islands. Iwan Asmara, a Lombok disaster official, said people poured out of their homes in panic to move to higher ground, particularly in North Lombok and Mataram, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara province, which includes Lombok. The Bali and Lombok airports continued operating Sunday night, according to the director general of civil aviation. There had been a half hour evacuation at the Lombok airport following the quake because the electricity went off.
Thousands of angry young people took to the streets of Bangladesh’s capital again Sunday to demand safer streets, facing police firing tear gas and pro-government activists who attacked them with clubs.
Protests have flared repeatedly in Dhaka since two students were killed last week by speeding buses.
The pro-government activists, members of a political youth league, also attacked at least five journalists, including an Associated Press photographer who was briefly hospitalized with a head injury.
Footage of the attack on social media showed him surrounded and beaten by nearly a dozen men in the city’s Dhanmondi neighbourhood.
The protests have become a serious embarrassment to the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ahead of a general election due in December.
Her party is blaming the main opposition, led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, for using the student anger to create chaos for political gains.
Political feuding between the two political leaders has dominated Bangladesh’s politics for more than a decade.