At least three people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Bangladesh today as officials evicted the leader of the opposition from the house where she had lived for 40 years.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to clear demonstrators in the capital Dhaka trying to prevent authorities from evicting former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia from her house.
At least 50 people were injured and more than 20 demonstrators detained in the capital Dhaka, police said.
Violence erupted in more than 20 other towns and dozens of people were injured in clashes with police. Around 50 people were injured in Serajganj, 150km northwest of Dhaka, local television channels reported.
At least three people were killed and five, including a lawmaker of the ruling party, injured in the suicide bomb attack near Khustia, 300km west of Dhaka
The bomb was detonated at the residence of Afaz Uddin, an Awami League member of parliament. Police would not say whether they thought the attack was related to the widespread violence over Ms Khaleda's eviction from her home.
Police and witnesses said up to 4,000 protesters armed with sticks and stones set fire to vehicles and attacked officers near the headquarters of Ms Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka.
Several thousand protesters skirmished with police close to Ms Khaleda's residence in the garrison area, and the clashes intensified as security forces cordoned off the building as a High Court deadline for her to vacate the house neared.
Ms Khaleda later told a news conference she had been forcibly evicted from the house where she had lived for 40 years."They entered my bedroom and ransacked all the furniture. They even beat my personal staff," said a tearful Ms Khaleda, speaking at her party office at Gulshan.
"I am not only humiliated but ashamed at the behaviour of the government. Now I seek justice from the people," she added.
Police later said the situation was under control but tense, while the BNP called for a one-day strike.
"To protest the (eviction) order we have called for a countrywide dawn to dusk general strike on Sunday," Khondaker Delwar Hossain, secretary general of the BNP, told journalists.
The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry asked the BNP to call off the strike.
Ms Khaleda's residence in a sprawling compound was leased to her by the government in 1982, after her husband and ex-president, General Ziaur Rahman, was killed in an abortive coup. They had lived in the house for several years.
The current government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cancelled the lease last year, intending to put up multi-storey buildings for families of army officers killed in a mutiny in a paramilitary unit headquarters in Dhaka.
Ms Hasina was elected for the first time in 1996 and again in 2008 in an election held under an army-backed interim government.
Reuters