Five dead in Bangladesh clash over Islamic edicts

Some witnesses in the town said six people had been killed by police fire.

Earlier local officials and witnesses said police fired teargas and guns as they tried to disperse hundreds of activists of the Islami Oikyo Jote group who were armed with sticks, knives and crude bombs,

The bloody protests followed a High Court ruling in December to ban certain fatwas, or Islamic edicts, that could subject women to torture for alleged adultery and prevent them from mixing and working with men.

On Saturday, Islamic militants attacked several policemen, killing one of them, during a day-long strike in Dhaka called by the Jote to oppose the court ruling and to denounce the foreign-funded non-government organisations that supported it.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has warned that orthodox Islamic and conservative political groups were trying to plunge the country into chaos.

Most of the estimated 100 people injured on Tuesday were militants who had organised a day-long strike in the town, but at least 10 policemen were also hurt, witnesses said.

The militants disrupted train services from Dhaka to Chittagong Port city and northeastern Sylhet town which run through Brahmanbaria, railway officials said.

Opposition parties, including the Jote, have called for strikes as part of a campaign against the court ruling. Opposition parties said on Tuesday they had also called the strikes to press for the release of radical Islamic leaders who were arrested during earlier demonstrations.

A four-party opposition alliance headed by former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, Chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has called for a strike on Wednesday.

The Islami Oikyo Jote is a member of the BNP’s alliance, along with the Jatiya Party of jailed former president Hossain Mohammad Ershad and the fundamentalist Jamaat-E-Islami party.

The alliance wants Hasina to resign and hold early parliamentary elections. Elections are not due before July 13.

Hasina has refused to quit under pressure, and on Monday she urged "freedom and democracy-loving Bangladeshis to rise against those trying to misuse Islam for gaining political power".

At least 150 people were injured on Monday in clashes between police and militants in Chittagong and Brahmanbaria.

An Islamic group, Islami Constitution Movement, which supports fatwa and opposes the groups campaigning against it, has called for another countrywide strike on Thursday.

Opposition parties have staged more than 70 days of strike since Hasina took office in June, 1996, costing the impoverished country billions of dollars in lost production and exports.

The strikes have routinely shut transport, factories, offices and the country’s main Chittagong Port.