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New Delhi: Protests continued to take place in Bangladesh on Friday (December 19) afternoon, a day after they erupted in response to the death of youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi and morphed into violence targeting newspaper houses, a prominent cultural organisation as well as an Indian consulate.

Hadi, who was a prominent face of the 2024 protests that brought down the Sheikh Hasina government, succumbed to his injuries in a hospital in Singapore on Thursday.

His body arrived in Dhaka on Friday afternoon and the interim government announced that his funeral will be held on Saturday on the parliament premises.

Dhaka has condemned the violence that has followed Hadi’s death and called on citizens to “resist all forms of mob violence committed by a few fringe elements”.

Indian diplomatic missions in Bangladesh are under a security blanket against the backdrop of Hadi and numerous protesters’ antipathy towards New Delhi.

Shortly after his death was announced on Thursday, groups of protesters stormed, vandalised and set fire to the offices of leading Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo as well as the English-language Daily Star.

Nurul Kabir too was assaulted outside the Daily Star‘s Dhaka office when he went there in his capacity as president of the Bangladesh Editors’ Council upon hearing of the attack on the newspaper’s premises, his newspaper New Age reported.

Early on Friday, protesters also damaged the building of the cultural organisation Chhayanaut in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area. An office of Hasina’s former ruling and currently banned Awami League party in Rajshahi was reportedly demolished as well.

United News of Bangladesh........

© The Wire