Nine people were killed in violence that rocked cities across Bangladesh as the main Opposition BNP on Tuesday enforced a 48-hour nationwide transport blockade to push its demand for postponing the general election scheduled for January 5. Activists of the BNP and its fundamentalist ally Jamaat-e- Islami exploded crude bombs, uprooted railway tracks and torched buses, cars and trains after the Government rejected their call to postpone the polls.
A leader of Jubo league, the youth front of the Awami league, was lynched by BNP and Jamaat activists in southwestern Satkhira, police said. Mahmudul Hasan, 30, was attacked while he was heading to his shop. A rickshaw-puller died when he was caught in a crossfire between Jamaat activists and police at laksham in southwestern Comilla district while an unidentified man was killed in clashes between opposition activists and police in northwestern Sirajganj. Two persons died in violence that occurred overnight after the Election Commission announced the poll schedule. Police said a youth died when a crude bomb went off in Comilla and a rickshaw-puller was killed in Dhaka.
The violence forced authorities to postpone national university and primary school certificate examinations scheduled for Tuesday. The Communist Party of Bangladesh too announced on Tuesday that it would boycott the polls. “Without consensus among political parties regarding the poll-time Government, no election can be acceptable,” CPB president Mujahidul Islam Selim told reporters. Railway links between Dhaka and the southeastern port city of Chittagong and northeastern Sylhet were cut as opposition activists uprooted train tracks in Brahmanbaria.