DHAKA: At least five demonstrators were killed in Bangladesh on Tuesday during violent clashes between rival student groups over quotas for coveted government jobs, police said, a day after more than 400 others were injured.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets as university students battled with counter-protesters backing the ruling Awami League party, fighting with sticks and hurling rocks.
The violence marks an escalation in efforts to hinder a determined weekslong campaign of sit-in protests and street marches that has ignored calls by Bangladesh’s prime minister and top court for students to return to class.
Three people were killed in the port city of Chittagong.
“All three had bullet injuries,” Chittagong Medical College Hospital director Mohammad Taslim Uddin told AFP.
“Some 35 people were injured.”
Rival student groups marched in several key locations around the capital Dhaka, some throwing bricks at each other, with traffic in the city of 20 million almost ground to a halt.
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A student was killed outside Dhaka College inspector Bacchu Mia told AFP, adding at least 60 people were also injured.
In the northern city of Rangpur, police commissioner Mohammad Moniruzzaman told AFP that a student had been killed in clashes.
He did not give details as to how the student died, but said police had fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters.
Rangpur Medical College hospital director Yunus Ali said the “student was brought dead to the hospital by other students”, adding that “his body had injury marks”.
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