Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)– At least two people were killed in Dhaka and Sylhet where opposition activists suddenly turned violent setting off a series of crude bombs and torching vehicles centering a scheduled party rally in the capital.
Police said blast of homemade bombs killed a youth in Motijheel commercial area at about 10.00 am (local time) as activists of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami activists fought pitched battles with law-enforcement agency personnel at different points in the capital.
The second death was reported from Sylhet where the opposition activists set on fire a bus burning to death one young man in the morning.
Suspect the victim, 24-year-old Arifuzzaman Arif, himself was carrying the explosives filled in a tin pot while they detained nearly 249 “unruly activists” from the city, 77 of them alone from the Motijheel area, police added.
A police spokesman said BNP-Jamaat activists set on fire at least five vehicles and vandalized several other vehicles in city’s different points started early in the morning.
In Sylhet, the violence erupted when BNP-Jamaat leaders and activists set fire to buses and vandalised many vehicles at the city’s different points in the morning.
They set alight a Sylhet-bound bus from nearby Habiganj at about 12 noon burning the victim to death while his co- passengers, however, managed to get off immediately, according to reports.
Police said the identity of the second victim could not be known immediately. The unruly activists also attacked people leaving at least 30 wounded.
BBN/SSR/AD-19Dec11-12:19 am (BST)
