DHAKA: More than 700 people including 104 police officers and 30 journalists were wounded in Bangladesh during a day of violent clashes around the South Asian country, Independent Television reported.
The network said that more than 700 people were injured during Thursday’s clashes between police and student protesters, with deadly protests in 26 of the country’s 64 districts. About two dozen people have been killed this week, officials said.
On Friday, telecommunications were also mostly disrupted across the country. Officials cut some mobile services to make an attempt to quell the unrest on Thursday, but the trouble spread across Bangladesh on Friday morning, local and western media reported.
Phone calls from overseas were not getting connected and calls via the Internet could not be completed.
Web sites of many Bangladesh-based newspapers were not updating on Friday and their social media handles were also not active due to disruption.
Western media reported that there was no mobile data or broadband on Friday. Even SMS or mobile-to-mobile text messages were not working in the South Asian country.
The countrywide agitation, the biggest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected earlier this year, has been fueled by high youth unemployment. About a fifth of the nation’s 170 million population is out of education or work.
Hasina’s administration had scrapped the quota system in 2018, but a court reinstated it last month. The government filed a petition against the decision and the Supreme Court of the country also suspended the high court order, pending hearing the government’s plea on Aug. 7.
