Dhaka: Two alleged saboteurs were shot dead in what officials called shoot-outs with law enforcement forces while 12 deaths in the past 24 hours have taken the death toll to 60 due to the unrest in Bangladesh in the past month.

The elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said the two “saboteurs” were gunned down in a predawn encounter in Dhaka’s Jatrabari area while police said they shot and detained another anarchist after he triggered an explosion in the Shahjahanpur area in the city.

“He [the third saboteur] is now being treated at Dhaka Medical College Hospital under our custody,” a police official familiar with the development said.

RAB officials, meanwhile, said the two saboteurs were killed instantly as the members of the elite anti-crime unit were forced to retaliate after a patrol car came under “petrol bomb attacks”.

“When the [RAB] patrol vehicle slowed down, a petrol bomb was lobbed first and as our personnel got off, the miscreant fired gunshots, [which had] to be retaliated,” a RAB spokesman said.

Last week, Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina asked law enforcement agencies to take “take any action to be deemed necessary”, to maintain law and order and ensure public safety, saying, “I am giving you this much liberty to do it”.

But the latest casualties came after Hasina’s arch-rival ex-premier Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) extended its nationwide shutdown until Thursday evening.

The decision forced authorities to defer for the second time in a week a crucial countrywide public examination, in which some 1.5 million children were set to appear on the completion of their ten years of schooling.

Education cost

BNP’s extended strike call to frustrate the scheduled Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exam, however, sparked massive criticism among guardians as Zia’s two granddaughters had returned to their abode in Malaysia to appear in their scheduled school examination there.

Zia’s self-exiled younger son Arafat Rahman Koko died of a sudden heart attack more than a week ago in Malaysia and his wife and two daughters had gone to Bangladesh to bury him.

“I wish them [Koko’s daughters] good luck, let them sit for their exams, but I urge you [Zia] to think about [the] 1.5 million SSC students as you do about Koko’s daughters,” education minister Nurul Islam Nahid said as BNP earlier defied his appeal to call off the strike.

The extended strike came as the BNP and its right-wing allies including fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami simultaneously enforced for the 29th consecutive day a nationwide transport blockade that they began to coincide with the first anniversary of the January 5, 2014, divisive polls, which they had boycotted.

The blockade sparked violent unrest with suspected antigovernment activists carrying out clandestine attacks with petrol bombs mostly targeting passenger buses and trucks, particularly at nights, killing some 50 civilians so far, out of which 34 died in arson attacks.

According to media reports, ten others were killed in police gunshots as authorities warned that law enforcement agencies including paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) would handle the saboteurs with an “iron hand”.

The worst such arson attack during the current spate of unrest killed seven bus passengers including children two days ago at central Comilla district. Police yesterday filed a case naming Zia as the “mastermind” of the assault alongside a Jamaat leader, who hails from the area.

This was the fifth such case against Zia in since January 25 when police accused her of “masterminding” deadly arson attacks on buses and other vehicles to enforce the nationwide blockade called by her party.

Legal experts said if police investigations found Zia’s links to the attacks, the court could issue a warrant for her arrest.

Too many victims

The burn units of Dhaka Medical Collage Hospital (DMCH) and several other facilities across Bangladesh, meanwhile, were reported to be filled with people with burn wounds in arson attacks.

Doctors said many of the burn injury patients begged to die because of unbearable pain and several have succumbed to their burn wounds already.

DMCH authorities said 111 victims of arson attacks were being treated at their burn unit alone while they lost hope of survival of several because of the intensity of their injuries.

According to reports tallied by major newspapers, the suspected blockaders in the past one month torched 906 vehicles and uprooted railway tracks in seven places forcing authorities to lower the speed limit of trains as a precaution at the cost of schedules.

Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries (DCCI) meanwhile estimated economic losses caused by the unrest saying the businesses incurred a loss of worth Taka 683 billion (Dh32 billion). The study found the ready-made garments, transport, agriculture, housing and tourism sectors were the worst affected.

Hasina, meanwhile, issued a tough note of warning against her arch-rival, saying Zia would have to “suffer a lot”, for spearheading the violent campaign to topple her government at the cost of innocent peoples’ lives.

BNP was virtually in a state of disarray since it boycotted the January 5, 2014, elections, but it waged a fierce campaign coinciding with the first anniversary of the divisive polls demanding a fresh inclusive midterm election.

Hasina rejected the demand and asked Zia to wait until 2019 for the next scheduled polls and prepare her party for the elections by “wining the peoples’ heart”, meanwhile.