A minimum of three individuals have been killed in Bangladesh on Tuesday throughout violent clashes between rival teams over quotas for coveted authorities jobs, police mentioned, a day after greater than 400 individuals have been injured.
Police fired tear fuel and rubber bullets as college students demanding price cuts clashed with counter-protesters supporting the ruling Awami League occasion, who fought with sticks and threw stones.
The violence is an escalation in efforts to thwart a decided marketing campaign that has ignored calls from Bangladesh’s prime minister and prime court docket for college kids to return to high school.
College students have been holding nearly each day protests for weeks demanding that the federal government introduce a merit-based system.
The quota system reserves greater than half of the extremely paid civil service jobs for particular teams, together with kids of heroes of Pakistan’s 1971 liberation struggle.
Critics say the system advantages the kids of pro-government teams backing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 76, who received her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote with out real opposition.
‘HE OPENED FIRE’
On Tuesday, teams of opposition college students marched in a number of locations in Dhaka, some throwing bricks at one another.
“College students have been protesting in a minimum of a dozen locations within the capital,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain instructed AFP.
A whole bunch of scholars joined protesters in different components of Bangladesh, blocking railway traces and roads.
Within the southwestern port metropolis of Chittagong, a scholar and a employee have been killed, mentioned Ala Uddin, police inspector at Chittagong Medical Faculty Hospital.
“The employee had gunshot wounds, however the scholar had different accidents,” Uddin instructed AFP.
Within the northern metropolis of Rangpur, police commissioner Mohammad Moniruzzaman instructed AFP {that a} scholar had been killed in clashes.
He gave no particulars of how the coed died, however mentioned police had fired rubber bullets and tear fuel to disperse the protesters.
Rangpur Medical Faculty Hospital director Yunus Ali mentioned the coed was introduced useless to the hospital by different college students, including that his physique had harm marks.
Tauhidul Haque Siam, a journalism scholar at Rokeya College, mentioned ruling occasion supporters had attacked anti-quota protesters, whereas police fired shotguns, which often hearth rubber bullets or plastic pellets.
“The police opened hearth with their shotguns on the protesters,” Siam mentioned, including that he had been wounded.
He mentioned the useless scholar “died within the taking pictures incident,” however his account couldn’t be verified.
In Dhaka, youngsters additionally joined the protests.
One scholar instructed AFP that the ruling occasion’s youth faction “attacked us with firearms, Molotov cocktails, machetes and sticks.”
‘HIT WITH RUBBER BULLETS’
On Monday, protesters mentioned they have been holding peaceable marches in Dhaka once they have been attacked by scholar activists from the ruling occasion.
In that incident, police inspector Bacchu Mia mentioned 297 individuals have been handled at Dhaka Medical Faculty Hospital, and 12 of them have been significantly unwell sufficient to be admitted.
Greater than 100 college students have been handled at Dhaka’s Jahangirnagar College medical centre, its head Shamsur Rahman mentioned, and 11 extra on the metropolis’s Enam Medical Faculty Hospital.
“4 individuals, together with a instructor who was hit by rubber bullets, are nonetheless in hospital,” mentioned Yousuf Ali, a health care provider on the Enam centre.
Monday’s clashes have been the worst violence for the reason that marketing campaign started, and Amnesty Worldwide urged Bangladesh to “instantly guarantee the protection of all peaceable protesters.”
U.S. State Division spokesman Matthew Miller additionally denounced “violence towards peaceable protesters,” in an announcement that Bangladesh’s overseas ministry referred to as disappointing.
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