28 dead as religious hardliners demand for blasphemy law
DHAKA: At least 28 people have died in street battles between Bangladeshi police and tens of thousands of Islamists, officials said Monday, deepening the divide between the secular government and religious hardliners.
In some of the fiercest violence to rock the capital since independence four decades ago, hundreds more people were reported to have been injured as riot police broke up a mass rally near a key commercial district.
Hundreds of bankers, insurance officials and stock traders had to sleep in their offices as the sound of gunfire echoed around the Motijheel Commercial Area through much of the night.
Witnesses said shops were torched while trees had been torn down and thousands of rocks littered the ground.
Police told AFP they now had the situation under control in the city centre but further violence had broken out in other parts of Dhaka.
The main Islamist group behind the protests said the death toll was much higher.
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 new blasphemy law.
“We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their
We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their gathering at Motijheel. They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks. Masudur Rahman, Dhaka police spokesman
gathering at Motijheel. They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks,” Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman told AFP.
The protesters dispersed early Monday, he added.
Mozammel Haq, a police inspector at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, told AFP that 11 bodies were brought to the clinic.
“One victim was a policeman who had been hacked in the head by protesters with machetes,” Haq said.
Eleven other bodies were taken to three other clinics.
Hospital officials said hundreds of people were injured.
There was also deadly violence at Kanchpur on the southeastern outskirts of the capital. — AFP