100 hurt in varsity riot Press Trust of India
Dhaka, Aug. 21: At least 100 students were injured in fierce overnight clashes with police as protests erupted in the Dhaka University campus after military personnel assaulted several students during a football match.
The campus virtually turned into a battlefield as police lobbed teargas shells, fired rubber bullets and used batons and water canons to disperse the stone-pelting students who were demanding
the withdrawal of
security forces from the campus here.
Witnesses said the clash was sparked off last evening after soldiers, who came to witness a student football match, assaulted three students following an argument at the main university playground, where a makeshift military camp was set up after imposition of Emergency on 11 January.
"The action came after a group of students initially demanded an apology from the soldiers and then marched to the army camp and pelted it with stones when the troops countered the students with batons," a witness said.
University authorities cancelled the scheduled examinations as angry students called a strike while riot police enforced a night-long siege around the campus at the heart of Bangladesh capital. Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor AFM Yusuf Haidar and several other teachers were also assaulted by police after midnight when they tried to go to the nearby Dhaka Medical College Hospital where at least 50 students were being treated. |