The BNP-led 18-party alliance’s 84-hour nonstop countrywide hartal entered the second day today (Monday).
The general strike, enforced to press the current regime for arranging the next general election under a non-party administration, will end at 6pm on Wednesday.
The first day of the hartal was marked by the killing of a man in Chittagong, stray incidents of crude bomb explosions, arson attacks, vandalism of vehicles, clashes and arrest of opposition activists.
In Chittagong, Nirmal Das, 42, son of Pranhari Das of Madhyam Madarsah area and an employee of the University of Science and Technology (USTC), was killed when an auto-rickshaw overturned amid chase by hartal pickets at Katakhali in Hathazari upazila.
Besides, some 100 vehicles were damaged, 160 crude bombs blasted and around 200 people injured across the country on the first day of the shutdown. Law enforcers also arrested at least 180 opposition activists during the hartal hours.
The shutdown programme was originally for 72 hours from 6am on Sunday to 6am on Wednesday, but it was later extended by 12 hours to 6 pm on Wednesday in protest against the arrest of senior BNP leaders.
Earlier, the opposition alliance enforced two spells of 60-hour countrywide shutdown — October 27-29 and November 4-6 — to press for the same demand, which left 20 people killed and over 8,000 people injured across the country.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police has taken all-out measures to ensure the security of city dwellers fending off any unpleasant incident in the capital during the opposition-sponsored hartal.
Sources at the DMP headquarters said over 10,000 additional police are on alert at different strategic points of the city to avert any untoward incident.
Plainclothes police are also there with still and video cameras at a number of strategic city points to identify the troublemakers during the hartal hours.
All types of vehicles engaged in providing medical services, ambulances, media vehicles and medicine and food shops are out of the hartal purview.
Source: UNBConnect
