DHAKA: Clashes between Bangladeshi protesters demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation and pro-government supporters killed at least eight people on Sunday, including knife wounds and gunshot wounds, police and medics said.
Three were killed in the northern Pabna district, two in the northern Rangpur district, two in the Munshiganj district of the capital Dhaka and one in the western Magura district, police and hospital doctors told AFP.
Asif Mahmud, one of the key protest leaders in the nationwide civil disobedience campaign, asked his supporters to be ready to fight.
“Get the bamboo poles ready and free Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
While the army stepped in to help restore order in the wake of earlier protests, some former military officers have since joined the student movement, and former army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.
Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman spoke to the officers of the military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday and told them that “Bangladesh Army is a symbol of people's trust”.
“She has always stood by the people and will do so in the interest of the people and in any need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement issued late on Saturday.
The statement did not provide further details and did not specifically say whether the military supports the protests.
Demonstrations against civil service job quotas sparked days of chaos in July that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina's 15-year tenure.
Troops briefly restored order, but crowds returned to the streets in huge numbers this week in an all-out non-cooperation movement aimed at paralyzing the government.
On Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka, the police were largely bystanders.
Growing movement
The protests have grown into a wider anti-government movement across the South Asian nation of around 170 million people.
The mass movement includes people from all walks of life in Bangladesh, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs calling for people's support have gone viral on social media.
“It's not about job quotas anymore,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name as she scrawled graffiti on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka, calling Hasina a “murderer”.
“We want our next generation to be able to live freely in the country.”
Counter-protests in support of the government are also expected.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Hasina's ruling Awami League, called on party activists to gather in “all wards in Dhaka city” and “in every district” across the country to show their support for the government.
“We don't want to get into any confrontation,” Quader said.
The capital, Dhaka, was tense on Sunday, with fewer cars and buses on the normally congested streets of the megacity of 20 million.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Dhaka and across the country.
Student protest
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing the initial protests, called rallies across the country.
Protests will be held at the entry points to Dhaka, with the main rally taking place in Dhaka's central Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered on Sunday morning.
“We will hold protests and rallies peacefully,” the group said in a statement late Saturday. “But if we are attacked, we urge (everyone) to make all preparations.”
Students Against Discrimination asked their compatriots to stop paying taxes and utility bills from Sunday to increase pressure on the government.
They also asked government workers and workers in the country's economically vital garment factories to go on strike.
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth straight election in January after being voted out without real opposition.
Her government is accused by rights groups of abusing state institutions to consolidate power and suppress dissent, including extrajudicially killing opposition activists.
Demonstrations began in early July calling for the reinstatement of a quota system that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been downgraded by the Bangladesh High Court.
