Chaos in Bangladesh: Deadly Protests Ignite Nationwide Unrest

Three people were killed in Bangladesh amid student-led protests against government job quotas. The unrest, which has led to widespread violence and disruptions in telecommunications, stems from anger over high unemployment and economic woes. The situation remains volatile as the death toll rises.

Three people were killed in Bangladesh on Friday as police cracked down on unrelenting student-led protests against government job quotas despite a ban on public gatherings, local media said. Police fired tear gas to scatter protesters in some areas, Reuters journalists reported. One said he could see many fires across the capital Dhaka from a rooftop, with smoke rising into the sky in several places.

Telecommunications were also disrupted, and television news channels went off the air. Authorities had cut some mobile telephone services the previous day to try to quell the unrest. Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo reported train services had been suspended nationwide as protesters blocked roads and threw bricks at security officials.

Three people were killed on Friday, it said, following violence on Thursday in 47 of Bangladesh's 64 districts that killed 27 and injured 1,500. The total number of dead from the protests touched 105 on Friday night, according to AFP reports citing hospitals. Reuters could not immediately verify these reports, and police have not issued a casualty toll.

The U.S. Embassy in Dhaka reported more than 40 deaths and "hundreds to possibly thousands" injured across Bangladesh. In a security alert, it said protests were spreading, with violent clashes being reported across Dhaka. The situation remains "extremely volatile," it said.

The protests initially broke out over student anger against controversial quotas which set aside 30% of government jobs for the families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan. The nationwide unrest, the biggest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's re-election this year, has also been fueled by high unemployment among young people, who make up nearly a fifth of a population of 170 million.

Some analysts say the violence is now also being driven by wider economic woes, such as high inflation and shrinking reserves of foreign exchange. The protests have opened old and sensitive political fault lines between those who fought for Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971 and those accused of collaborating with Islamabad.

The former include the Awami League party of Hasina, who branded the protesters "razakar," utilizing a term that described independence-era collaborators. International rights groups criticized the suspension of services and the actions of security forces. The European Union expressed deep concern over the violence and loss of life.

"It is vital that further violence is averted and that a peaceful resolution to the situation is found as swiftly as possible, underpinned by the rule of law and democratic freedoms," the EU said in a statement. Neighboring India deemed the unrest an internal matter of Bangladesh and confirmed the safety of all 15,000 Indians in the country. Indian students in Bangladesh were returning by road.

Violence linked to the protests also erupted in distant London, home to a large Bangladeshi population, where police quelled clashes between large groups of men in the east of the British capital.

Friday began with the internet and overseas telephone calls being crippled, while the websites of several Bangladesh newspapers did not update and were inactive on social media. A few voice calls went through, but there was no mobile data or broadband, a Reuters journalist said. Even text messages were not being transmitted.

News television channels and state broadcaster BTV went off the air, although entertainment channels continued normal programming. Some news channels displayed messages blaming technical problems and promising to resume programming soon.

The official websites of the central bank, the prime minister's office, and police appeared to have been hacked by a group calling itself "THE R3SISTANC3." "Operation HuntDown, Stop Killing Students," read identical messages splashed on the sites, further stating, "It's not a protest anymore, it's a war now."

Another message on the page read, "The government has shut down the internet to silence us and hide their actions." The government offered no comment on the communications issues.

On Thursday, it announced that it was willing to hold talks with the protesters, but they refused. Many opposition party leaders, activists, and student protesters had been arrested, said Tarique Rahman, the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Reuters could not confirm the arrests.

(Additional reporting by YP Rajesh, Sudipto Ganguly, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Shivam Patel, Sakshi Dayal, Kanjyik Ghosh, and Ainnie Arif in India; Writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Angus MacSwan, Kirsten Donovan)