At least 13 people were killed and hundreds injured in the clashes on Thursday
Police fight with protesters, fire tear gas
Some mobile internet services are temporarily down.
The minister says that the government is ready to talk to the students.
Thirteen people were killed in Dhaka on Thursday when thousands of students armed with sticks and stones clashed with armed police, the worst day of violence in protests against Bangladesh’s government jobs quota policy.
Authorities have cut some mobile internet services to try to control the unrest, which has killed at least 19 people this week.
The dead on Thursday, the highest single-day death toll ever, included a bus driver who was shot in the chest, a rickshaw puller, and three students, officials said. Knowledge was.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up groups of protesters, who torched vehicles, police stations, and other facilities, injuring 100, said Witnesses.
The nationwide protests, the largest since the re-election of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina earlier this year, have been fueled by youth unemployment. About a fifth of the country’s 170 million people are out of work or education.
The protesters are demanding that the state reserve 30 percent government jobs for the families of people who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Hasina’s government abolished 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’s order. The government’s appeal will be heard on August 7.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for restraint from all sides and urged authorities to investigate all acts of violence and hold those responsible accountable — U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
“The United Nations Secretary General Guterres encourages the meaningful and constructive participation of youth to address the ongoing challenges in Bangladesh. Violence can never be a solution,” U.N. spokesperson Dujarric told reporters.
At least eleven of the deaths on Thursday occurred in Dhaka. The capital’s main university campus had been the site of some of the worst protests in the country, but stronger demonstrations took place in other parts of the city on Thursday.
Law Minister Anisul Haque said that the government is ready to negotiate with the protesters.
The protesters refused, saying that “talks and firing do not go together”.
“We cannot trample dead bodies for dialogue. The dialogue could have happened earlier,” protest coordinator Naheed Islam said.
Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who brought independence to Bangladesh, has so far rejected protesters’ demands that the jobs policy be scrapped, saying the matter was in the hands of the courts.
All public and private universities were closed indefinitely from Wednesday and security forces were deployed on campuses to maintain law and order.