At least 16 Awami League (AL) leaders and workers, including two women activists, were killed and over 300 were injured on August 21, 2004, when a group of unidentified persons threw hand-grenades at a mini truck in front of the party's central office in Dhaka from which Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the party and the opposition, was addressing a party rally. Four others, including two police constables, died subsequently of the injuries sustained by them in the attack. The party members, responsible for her security, managed to whisk her away in a jeep. As they were doing so, those with fire-arms fired at the vehicle, including at its tyres, but they managed to take her away. It was the most serious and the most determined attack on her life since the present coalition Government, headed by Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and with the active participation of two Islamic fundamentalist parties (the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) and the Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ ) came to power after the last elections. The attack would appear to have been mounted with considerable precision, indicating a high level of training for the assailants. It has been estimated that 10 to 13 hand-grenades were thrown at the truck. None of them misfired and none of them was mishandled by the assailants, which might have resulted in their own deaths or injuries to some of them.
|