Awami League (AL) President and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Sheikh Hasina yesterday hit back at the prime minister for crticising her and said Khaleda Zia was the "champion" when it comes to enforcing hartal.

"She (Khaleda) criticised the Awami League for calling hartal. During the past five-year rule of the AL, she enforced 382 har-tals...today, people are fed up and they want to get rid of repression, torture, terrorism, unabated corruption and misrule of the BNP-Jamaat coalition," Hasina said.

Hasina's criticism came as Prime Minister Khaleda Zia on Tuesday lashed out at the Awami League for enforcing hartal at the beginning of the New Year, saying that the AL wants to make people averse to work when people would start life with a fresh zeal.

The former prime minister was speaking at a discussion, marking the Victory Day organised by the city unit of the AL at the Bangabandhu Avenue in the afternoon.

Later, the AL declared it as a condolence meeting to mourn the

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15 army officers killed in a plane crash in Benin. The AL leaders and workers offered munajat, seeking salvation of the departed souls of the peacekeepers. They also observed a one-minute silence.

Hasina said, "There is no alternative to movement and strug-gle.this oppressive government must be ousted to establish a propeople government."

Describing the ruling coalition as a "malignant tumour," Hasina called for removing it through surgery.

Conveying her New Year's greetings, the AL chief said people have witnessed dead bodies and killings in the past year. "I wish the autocratic regime would be toppled in 2004 and people would never see any more dead bodies," she said.

Dismissing the prime minister's remarks that people rejected the Awami League, Hasina said people in fact rejected the BNP-Jamaat coalition as they bagged only 45 percent vote in the general elections on October 1, 2001 even after rigging 30 percent of the votes.

She was also critical of the coalition government for not taking appropriate measures to tackle the recent monga in the northern region and mitigate the sufferings of the poor this winter.

AL General Secretary Abdul Jalil MP, former vice-chancellor of National University Prof Durgadas Bhattachariya, journalist Habibur Rahman Milon, Advocate Ozaer Farook and AL leaders Omar Ali and Salauddin Badal also spoke.