Deadly clashes mar Bangladesh rally

DHAKA

BANGLADESH police fired water cannon and shotguns at opposition protesters in the capital yesterday, killing one person, at the start of a banned mass march aimed at thwarting next month’s general election.

Hundreds of demonstrators, some throwing home-made bombs, battled police as they tried to gather at the opposition’s head-quarters and other places through-out Dhaka for the so-called “March for Democracy.”

Some 11,000 police and elite Ra-pid Action Battalion officers were patrolling the capital to try to halt the march, Dhaka police spokes-man Masudur Rahman told AFP.

Police have detained more than 1,000 opposition supporters as a “preventive measure”, while authorities have suspended Dhaka-bound bus, ferry and train services – virtually cutting off the city from the rest of the country.

Police fired water cannon at protesters outside the national press club, an AFP reporter said.

In Rampura neighbourhood, more than 200 demonstrators threw small bombs at police who respondedwith shotgun blasts during clashes there that left one person dead, a senior officer said.

“We fired shotguns to disperse the protesters who exploded do-zens of small bombs,” assistant police commissioner Nur Alam Siddiqui told AFP.

The main opposition Bangla-desh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies have staged weeks of deadlyprotests, strikes and transport blockades to try to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign. Dozens of people have been killed.

The opposition says an election scheduled for Jan 5 must be held under a neutral caretaker government, as in the past, to prevent ballot-rigging.

BNP leader Khaleda Zia, a two-time former prime minister and Hasina’s arch-rival, has urged supporters to defy the ban on yesterday’s march and converge on the capital.

AFP