100 hurt as Bangladesh student groups clash

Rival students in Bangladesh clashed yesterday leaving at least 100 people injured, as demonstrators opposing quotas for coveted government jobs battled counter-protesters loyal to the ruling party, police said.Police and witnesses said hundreds of anti-quota protesters and students backing the ruling Awami League party battled for hours on Dhaka University campus, hurling rocks, fighting with sticks and beating each other with iron rods.Some carried machetes while others threw petrol bombs, witnesses said.The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs for specific groups, including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war from Pakistan.“They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at each other,” local police station chief Mostajirur Rahman said.Masud Mia, a police inspector, said “around 100 students including women” were injured, and had been taken to hospital. “More people are coming”, Mia added.Students launched protests earlier this month demanding a merit-based system.They have continued despite Bangladesh’s top court suspending the quota scheme.Anti-quota protesters blamed the ruling party students for the violence.“They attacked our peaceful procession with rods, sticks and rocks,” Nahid Islam, the national co-ordinator of the anti-quota protests, said.“They beat our female protesters. At least 150 students were injured including 30 women, and conditions of 20 students are serious.”Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina, 76, won her fourth consecutive general election in January, in a vote without genuine opposition parties that saw a major crackdown against her political opponents, who boycotted the poll.

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