Violence erupts in Bangladesh after wounded youth leader dies<\/p>\n
Violence broke out in Bangladesh’s capital early Friday after a youth leader of the country’s 2024 pro-democracy uprising who was injured in an assassination attempt died in a hospital in Singapore.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Dhaka after the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, 32, was announced, to demand that his killers be arrested.<\/p>\n
Several buildings in the capital, including those housing the country’s two leading newspapers, were set on fire, according to authorities, with staff trapped inside.<\/p>\n
Hadi was a key figure in last year’s uprising that ended the autocratic rule of prime minister Sheikh Hasina and sent her fleeing to India. He was running for a parliament seat in the February 2026 national election.<\/p>\n
On December 12, Hadi was shot by masked assailants as he was leaving a mosque in Dhaka. He was airlifted to a hospital in Singapore for treatment, where he succumbed to his injuries on Thursday.<\/p>\n
At least three cases of arson were reported in Dhaka after the news of his death spread early Friday, a spokesperson for the Fire Brigade and Civil Defence force told AFP, including a fire at the Daily Star building and another at a building housing the Prothom Alo newspaper.<\/p>\n
The two papers are the largest in the South Asian country, but protesters accused them of being aligned with neighbouring India, where Hasina has taken refuge.<\/p>\n
Zyma Islam, a reporter for the Daily Star, said she was trapped inside the burning building.<\/p>\n
“I can’t breathe anymore. There’s too much smoke. I am inside. You are killing me,” she wrote on her Facebook page.<\/p>\n
The fire at the Daily Star building was brought under control at 1:40 am (1940 GMT on Thursday), firefighting officials said.<\/p>\n
However, 27 employees were still inside.<\/p>\n
“We took refuge at the rear of the building and could hear them chanting slogans,” Ahmed Deepto, a Star reporter, told AFP, referring to protesters.<\/p>\n
The house of India’s deputy ambassador to Bangladesh was also surrounded by hundreds of people who were trying to demonstrate in a sit-in, but police lobbed tear gas shells to disperse the crowd, according to local news reports.<\/p>\n
In addition, protesters blocked a key highway leading from the capital and attacked the residence of a former minister in Chittagong in the country’s southeast, according to footage shown on local television.<\/p>\n
Protesters also attacked Chhayanaut, a center in Dhaka devoted to Bengali culture.<\/p>\n
– ‘An irreparable loss to the nation’ – <\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, Singaporean authorities announced that Hadi had died in a local hospital.<\/p>\n
“Despite the best efforts of the doctors…, Mr Hadi succumbed to his injuries,” Singapore’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement, adding that it was assisting Bangladeshi authorities with repatriating his body. <\/p>\n
In Dhaka, the interim government headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus confirmed Hadi’s death.<\/p>\n
“His demise is an irreparable loss for the nation,” Yunus said in a televised speech.<\/p>\n
“The country’s march toward democracy cannot be halted through fear, terror, or bloodshed.”<\/p>\n
The government also announced special prayers at mosques on Friday and a half-day of mourning on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Hadi, a senior leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha, was an outspoken critic of India, where Hasina remains in self-imposed exile.<\/p>\n
– Manhunt for gunmen –<\/p>\n
Bangladeshi police meanwhile have launched a manhunt for Hadi’s shooters, releasing photographs of two key suspects and offering a reward of five million taka (about $42,000) for information leading to their arrest.<\/p>\n
Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner leading Bangladesh until the February 12 vote, has called the shooting a premeditated attack carried out by a powerful network aimed at derailing the election.<\/p>\n
Muslim-majority Bangladesh, a nation of 170 million people, will directly vote for 300 lawmakers for its parliament, with another 50 selected on a women’s list.<\/p>\n
The last elections, held in January 2024, gave Hasina a fourth straight term and her Awami League 222 seats, but were decried by opposition parties as a sham.<\/p>\n
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by three-time former prime minister Khaleda Zia, is widely tipped to win the upcoming vote.<\/p>\n
Zia is in intensive care in Dhaka, and her son and political heir Tarique Rahman, is set to return from exile in Britain after 17 years on December 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Violence erupts in Bangladesh after wounded youth leader dies Violence broke out in Bangladesh’s capital early Friday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-358089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}