At least eight people died and over 20 got injured in different places in the country yesterday on the ninth day of the BNP-led alliance’s indefinite rail-road blockade.
In Rangpur, at least five including three women and a child were killed and 15 others injured when blockade supporters hurled a petrol bomb on a packed passenger bus at Batason area of Mithapur upazila. The deceased could not be identified immediately.
Police said the bus was taking passengers when the bomb was hurled. Fire soon spread throughout the bus and four people were burnt alive while the others received burn injuries of various degrees.
The victims’ bodies and the injured were sent to the Rangpur Combined Military Hospital. Another injured, 60-year-old Tosiron Begum, died later in the night after being brought to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, confirmed the hospital’s burn unit Resident Surgeon Partha Shankar Paul.
In Sonagazi upazila of Feni, Jubo League leader Belal Hossain, 35, died of injuries that he had sustained the day before in an attack by miscreants. He was the organisational secretary of the Sonagazi union unit of the ruling Awami League’s youth front.
The police said BNP and Jamaat activists beat Belal at the Bhoirob Chowdhury area on Tuesday night. Later, he was admitted to the local upazila health complex, where his condition worsened. He was later taken to the Chittagong Medical College Hospital where the on-duty doctors declared him dead yesterday morning.
Two people including a Shibir activist were killed and two other Shibir men injured in separate incidents in Chittagong yesterday.
Around 4am, Shibir activist Jubayer, a resident of Chunti area of Lohagara upazila, was killed when a truck ran over him and his two associates while they were trying to stop and torch the truck on the Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar Highway.
Police said they had found Jubayer’s body but the other two had been taken away by their families and were secretly being given treatment.
Just like the first eight days of the blockade, sporadic incidents of violence were reported from various parts of the capital yesterday.
Sanjid Hasan Ovi, 19, a student of the capital’s Kabi Nazrul College, was admitted to the ENT department of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after he received injuries on his face from a crude bomb blast.
SI Mahbub of Shahbagh police station said miscreants exploded two bombs at the Bangshal intersection around 7:30pm, one of which hit Ovi in the face.
When this report was being filed around 10pm, Ovi was being taken to the operation theater; doctors suspect that he may lose one eye.
Two private cars were torched in the Dhanmondi area; three buses were burnt down in Gulistan, Signboard and Nilkhet areas. In the Purana Paltan area, blockade supporters set off at least four crude bombs.
In a separate incident of blast in front of the Hossain Market in Badda, one person was injured.
Our Barisal correspondent reports that a young man named Selim, helper of a BRTC bus, narrowly escaped injuries by managing to flee in the nick of time after the bus was set on fire by blockade supporters near the Agoiljhara College Gate crossing around 3am. The bus was parked there for the night.
Apart from that, pickets kept the Dhaka-Barisal highway blocked for about two hours by felling a big Krishnachura tree at Tarakupi in Gournadi upazila around 1:30am. Police removed the tree and freed the highway around 3:30am.
In Comilla, police nabbed eight leaders of Jamaat and its student body Shibir in connection with the torching of a bus in Ulipur upazila.
In Gaibandha, a truck helper named Mahmudul Islam, 27, received burn injuries when pickets set a paddy-laden truck on fire at Shrimukh of Gobindaganj upazila around 10:30pm Tuesday.
In a separate incident, a mini truck was torched in the Ahmednagar area of the district in the early hours of yesterday.
In Natore, some passengers of a truck alleged that blockade supporters had set the truck on fire forcing them out and looted Tk50,000 from their possession. Before that, they torched a tire and kept the Natore-Pabna Highway blocked for several hours.