Two people were killed and more than 70, including policemen, were injured in clashes across the country on Thursday, the second day of Jamaat’s 48-hour non-stop countrywide general strike. A Jamaat-e-Islami activist was killed as the police fired into pickets in Meherpur and an auto-rickshaw passenger died from his wounds that he had sustained when pickets pelted the vehicle with stones in Sirajganj.
The death on Thursday took to three the total death figure in the general strike that Jamaat enforced beginning on Wednesday morning ‘demanding the release of its detained leaders, including Abdul Quader Mollah, and the reinstatement of the caretaker government system.’
An auto-rickshaw driver died from his wounds that he had sustained as pickets in Feni pelted his vehicle with stones on Wednesday, the first day of the strike.
Jamaat, a partner in the BNP-led alliance, announced the general strike soon after the Appellate Division on Tuesday handed Quader, the party’s assistant secretary general, death sentence on an appeal against an earlier verdict which sentenced him to life imprisonment for war crimes charges.
Three people who were wounded as pickets burnt their vehicles in Gazipur, Comilla and Bogra on Thursday were sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in a critical condition.
The police arrested 20 Shibir activists at places in Bogra and Gazipur.
The second day’s strike was relaxed in the capital Dhaka. But pickets attacked the police in Sylhet and damaged and burnt buses in Dhaka, Comilla, Gazipur, Bogra. Vehicles stayed off the road on long-distance routes. Most business houses and educational institutions remained closed.
Law enforcers fired gunshots and teargas shells and charged at pickets with truncheons in clashes that broke out in places such as Meherpur, Sylhet, Barisal and Bogra.
Jamaat and Shibir activists exploded crude bombs, attacked law enforcers, damaged and burnt vehicles during strike hours.
The police arrested more than a hundred people suspected of being Jamaat and Shibir activists at places across the country.
The New Age correspondent in Meherpur said that Jamaat activist Delwar Hossain Shahid, 35, had died and at least 35 people, including five policemen, were injured as a clash broke out between the police and picket at Mujibnagar in the district on Thursday morning.
Local people and the police said that the clash had broken out when the police tried to disperse Jamaat activists blocking the Meherpur–Chuadanga and the Meherpur–Mujibnagar Road at Gaurinagar of Mujibnagar.
Jamaat said that deceased was an activist of the party. It said that at least 30 of its activists had been injured and 12 of them had been injured with bullets.
Police subinspector Shamsul Mannan was critically injured. He was sent to Combined Military Hospital in Jessore, the superintendent of police, AKM Nahidul Islam, said.
The police official, however, said that the Jamaat activist who died had not been wounded in police firing. Police deployment was reinforced to head off further trouble.
The correspondent in Sirajganj said the auto-rickshaw passenger had died after he had been injured when pickets pelted the vehicle with stones. Another was injured when a rickshaw the pickets were chasing headed off the road into a roadside ditch at Chandi Dashganti on the Sirajganj–Nalka Road.
The deceased was Masud Hossain, 27, of Deobhog of Raiganj in the district. The injured Shah Alam, of Patdhari at Salanga was sent to Sirajganj General Hospital.
The strike in the captial Dhaka passed off without any major incident. At least 16 passengers, including two officials of the Anti-Corruption Commission, were injured in at Dhanmondi in the morning as pickets pelted a bus with stones.
The commission’s deputy directors Mir Joynul Abedin Shibli and SM Mofidur Rahman were injured with pieces of glass broken off the window of the bus about 9:15am when the pickets hurled stones at the bus. The pickets also exploded three to four crude bombs in the area.
Shibir activists exploded two to three crude bombs at Azimpur about 6:00am. The pickets also damaged a police van at Lalbagh about 8:00am, the Lalbagh police officer-in-charge, Nurul Muttakin, said.
A Rapid Action Battalion team on Wednesday night arrested 11 Shibir activists in possession of materials used in making petrol bombs, books and posters, the RAB 4 commanding officer, Md Quamrul Hasan, said.
A RAB 3 team also arrested two Shibir activists in possession of gun powder at Madartek. The Jatrabati police also arrested 10 pickets in the morning.
Leaders and activists of the Dhaka city Awami League and its front organisations brought out a procession against the strike on Bangabandhu Avenue.
The Dhaka city unit AL general secretary, Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, at a rally during the procession said that the leader of the opposition in the parliament, Khaleda Zia, was crying for war criminals when the whole nation was happy about the Appellate Division verdict handing Abdul Quader Molla death sentence.
The correspondent in Sylhet said that at least two policemen had been injured when pickets blocking a road at Subidbazar attacked them about 7:00am.
The activists attacked and exploded a crude bomb into the police in which the policemen were injured. Eight Shibir activists were arrested.
In Chittagong, the police arrested nine activists of Jamaat and Shibir at places of Satkania on Wednesday night in the connection with firing into the police.
Constable Iqbal Hossain, who was wounded as a bullet the pickets fired pierced him through the chest, is still reported to be in a critical condition in the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital in Dhaka.
The police filed a case in this connection on Thursday morning against 60 people, with 25 being named.
In Comilla, pickets brought out a procession at Kandirpar and Thompson Bridge in the town about 7:00am and exploded crude bombs at Shasangachha.
The police filed a case against 274 leaders and activists of Jamaat and Shibir in connection with violence that took place at Laksam on the first day of the strike on Wednesday.
In Barisal, six people, including three policemen, were injured in a clash with pickets. The police fired gun shots and arrested eight people at Banaripara.
The pickets also exploded crude bombs, damaged vehicles and blocked roads in Jhenaidah, Khulna, Jhalakati and Bagerhat.
-With New Age input
