DHAKA: A mob torched a train in central Bangladesh yesterday as anger over a grenade attack which killed 19 people and narrowly missed opposition leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed erupted in violence and protests, officials said.
Police fired blanks to disperse the crowd which set fire to a Dhaka-bound express train at a station about 80km east of the capital, forcing passengers to flee, a rail official said.
In other parts of the country, Awami League activists staged spontaneous anti-government demonstrations, while wildcat strikes brought the southeastern port city of Chittagong, northeastern Sylhet and a number of other cities to a halt, officials and media reports said.
Meanwhile police patrolled the streets of a tense Dhaka following Saturday's violence which Sheikh Hasina, a former prime minister and head of the opposition Awami League, escaped from with minor leg injuries.
Traffic was light on the city's roads due to fears of a repeat of overnight clashes between police and political activists who set cars alight and damaged property, witnesses said.
Officers in riot gear blocked off the area around the Awami League party headquarters in the capital.
On Saturday Sheikh Hasina's car had been raked with gunfire after grenades were lobbed into a crowd which had just finished listening to her give a speech, the witnesses added.
Doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where many of the wounded were taken, said they were still treating 19 people, 13 of whom were seriously injured.
An unknown number of people, however, had gone to private clinics and other hospitals, the doctors added. They included a senior female party member who, according to media reports yesterday, has had both legs amputated.
In Chittagong, 208km from Dhaka, news of the attacks sent hundreds of Awami League activists on the rampage, overturning and setting fire to cars, a police spokesman said.
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