DHAKA: At least 104 police officers and 30 journalists were injured in Bangladesh during a day of violent clashes around the country, private broadcaster Independent Television reported.
The network said 702 people were injured during Thursday’s confrontations between police and student protesters, with clashes in 26 of the country’s 64 districts.
Protesters set fire to several government buildings as well as vehicles along the streets, a police statement said.
“The miscreants have already torched, vandalized and carried out destructive activities,” on the offices of state broadcaster BTV and the national disaster management agency along with “various” police and government buildings, said the statement, issued after a nationwide Internet shutdown Thursday night.
An injured Bangladeshi policeman lies on a street in Dhaka on July 18, 2024, during clashes with students during dayslong protests over the allocation of government jobs. (AP)
The statement was issued late Thursday after the imposition of a nationwide Internet shutdown that cut off Bangladesh’s lines of communication with the outside world.
“So far, we have shown maximum restraint,” police said, adding if the destructive activities continued, they would “be forced to make maximum use of law.”
Thirty-nine people have died this week in the clashes, sparked by student protests over civil service hiring rules, with 32 killed Thursday in the deadliest day of unrest so far.
Private broadcaster Independent Television said 702 people had been injured during Thursday’s clashes including 104 police officers and 30 journalists.
At least 26 of the country’s 64 districts saw clashes on Thursday, the network said.
On Friday, telecommunications remained widely disrupted across the nation, Reuters witnesses in Dhaka and New Delhi said.
Protesters vandalize vehicles during the ongoing anti-quota protest in Dhaka on July 18, 2024. (AFP)
Telephone calls from overseas were mostly not getting connected and calls through the Internet could not be completed.
Web sites of several Bangladesh-based newspapers were not updating on Friday morning and their social media handles were also not active.
Only some voice calls were working in the country and there was no mobile data or broadband on Friday morning, a Reuters photographer in Dhaka said. Even SMSes or mobile-to-mobile text messages were not going through, he added.
The nationwide agitation, the biggest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected earlier this year, has been fueled by high youth unemployment. Nearly a fifth of the country’s 170 million population is out of work or education.
Protesters are demanding the state stop setting aside 30 percent of government jobs for the families of people who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Hasina’s government had scrapped the quota system in 2018, but a high court reinstated it last month. The government appealed against the verdict and the Supreme Court suspended the high court order, pending hearing the government’s appeal on Aug. 7.
