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At least 29 dead in daylong mayhem

11 of them students; over 3,000 hurt, many hit by shotgun pellets; protesters reject govt call for talks; violence rocks 19 districts; several establishments including BTV centre set afire
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
In an unprecedented scale of violence across the country, at least 29 people, including 11 students and a journalist, were killed and more than 3,000 wounded in fierce clashes between quota protesters and law enforcers joined in by ruling party activists yesterday.
The 11 students are from Dhaka, Chattogram, Savar, Madaripur, Narsingdi and Sylhet. Many of the victims are yet to be identified, so the number of students killed may rise.
The protests began from where it was left off on Wednesday night, and continued in Dhaka and other parts of the country throughout yesterday.
The violence saw at least two government establishments, including state-run BTV Bhaban in the capital’s Rampura, attacked and set alight.
In the afternoon, after many were already killed and injured, the government invited the protesting students to sit for talks, but the students rejected the call and vowed to continue their movement.
“No dialogue will take place over the blood of the martyrs. It is the government that has to find the solution,” Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the movement, said in a Facebook post in the evening, just hours before the government shut down the internet.
The intensity of violence, and the death toll that climbed to 36 so far are unprecedented in any student movement in recent memory. By the afternoon, parts of Dhaka’s skyline turned black with thick smoke coming from burning buildings and cars.
Earlier on Tuesday, six people were killed in Dhaka, Chattogram and Rangpur. Another man who was injured in the previous day’s violence died yesterday.
The death toll from yesterday’s clashes may go up.
Different private hospitals, especially in Uttara where one of the fiercest clashes took place, struggled to treat the injured patients that rose by the hour.
Violence ensued when law enforcers and ruling party activists carrying firearms, rods, iron pipes, sticks and hockey sticks tried to disperse students enforcing a “complete shutdown” of transport networks, businesses and offices yesterday, demanding quota reforms.
Dhaka was cut off from the rest of the country, as rail and road communications came to a halt.
The protesters also vandalised and set fire to the disaster management office building in the capital’s Mohakhali and at least three police outposts in the city.
Parts of Dhaka looked like warzones as law enforcers used shotguns, teargas shells and sound grenades against the protesters, who responded by throwing brick chunks. AL activists and police also hurled bricks at the demonstrators.
Of the dead, 23 were in Dhaka. Of them, 10 were killed in Jatrabari, Shanir Akhra and Azimpur. One of them was a journalist of Dhaka Times. Another nine in Dhaka’s Uttara and nearby areas; two Violent Our
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