Days of death and destruction in Dhaka

Residents of the capital spent a harrowing few days in fear and anxiety as carnage roiled through the streets and blood pooled in hospitals

Students and job seekers calling for reforms to the quota system for recruitment to government jobs launched protests on the first day of July. Two weeks later, on Jul 15, the protests turned bloody. Two days later, clashes between protesters and law enforcers spread throughout the capital, leading to death, bloodshed, arson, and vandalism. On Jul 19 and Jul 20, the chaos threatened to overwhelm the entire nation as the city’s residents spent an exhausting 48 hours wracked by anxiety.

But the violence was not confined to Dhaka alone. It had spread nationwide. Prisons were attacked, weapons looted, and inmates freed.

Over 150 people were killed in the clashes. Over 1,000 were injured or shot. More than 1,000 police personnel were injured and three of them died.

The quota protests – organised under the ‘Anti-Discrimination Student Movement’ – turned deadly on Jul 16 as six people were killed in clashes. The bloodshed inflamed the tensions surrounding the protests.

That night Dhaka University and all other public and private universities in the country were instructed to close and the University Grants Commission ordered students to be removed from residential halls. All educational institutions across the country were closed.

Instead of abandoning their movement, the protesters called absentee funeral prayers and coffin marches for the dead. A section of protesters forced the Chhatra League – the ruling party’s student wing – out of university residential halls across the country.

Throughout Wednesday, the protesters clashed repeatedly with police during their programmes. Students from private universities, schools, and colleges in Dhaka’s Badda, Rampura, Notunbazar, Nadda, Uttara, and Azampur areas took to the streets in solidarity with the quota protests.

On Wednesday night, the clashes were wreathed in flame. A group of people suddenly took to the streets in Dhaka’s Jatrabari and Shonir Akhra areas, setting fires and attacking police. At one point they set fire to the toll plaza at the Mayor Hanif Flyover. The clashes continued in several phases into Sunday and spread from Jatrabari and Shonir Akhra to Rayerbag to Narayanganj Signboard to Kanchpur, Demra, Sanarpar and even the Staff Quarters area.

On Thursday morning, groups of protesters took to the streets in Jatrabari, Rayerbag, Rampura, Badda, Uttara, Azampur, the Science Laboratory Intersection, Mohammadpur’s 3-Way Intersection, Mirpur-10 and many other areas around the capital. Police used tear shells and shotgun pellets to try and contain the crowds. Brutal clashes spread across Dhaka. Dhaka Medical College Hospital reported 12 deaths on the day.

The arson attacks began on Thursday afternoon. Attackers vandalised and torched vehicles near the Disaster Management Building in Mohakhali, destroying 53 of them. The Emergency Response Coordination Centre on the ground floor was completely gutted.

Next to the Disaster Management Building is Khawaja Tower, which houses data centres and major equipment for many internet service providers. The government has claimed that the fire spread to Khawaja Tower and greatly reduced the bandwidth available to the country, hampering internet service.

Soon after the fire at the Disaster Management Building, fires were set at the nearby Bridges Building and the BRTA Building. Attackers stormed into the buildings and torched 55 vehicles, including cars, SUVs, microbuses, pickup trucks, and motorcycles.

There was an attack at the Directorate General of Health Services in Mohakhali as well. Several vehicles were burnt nearby. Heath Minister Samanta Lal Sen said gunpowder was used to set fire to the cars.

Even as black smoke swirled into the sky from the fires, no firefighters were on the ground. The Fire Service says they were unable to send units to the affected areas as police could not assure them of security.

The BTV Building in Rampura was targeted too, with attackers and arsonists destroying 16 vehicles, as well as structures and equipment at the state news channel.

On Monday, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said, “There was an archive commemorating 100 years of BTV, which included a catalogue of Bangladesh’s history and culture. They destroyed it.”

There were attacks on more government offices on Friday. WASA facilities in Rampura were damaged and 40 garbage trucks for the Dhaka North City Corporation in Mirpur were torched. Arson attacks were carried out on police boxes and outposts, vehicles, and motorcycles.

Attackers swarmed the BRTA offices in Mirpur-13, destroying five jeeps and several motorcycles. They smashed Tk 1.21 billion in equipment for checking the fitness of vehicles too.

Three BRTA buses were gutted by fire. Buses, trucks, pickups, microbuses, CNG autorickshaws, and motorcycles belonging to private institutions and individuals were torched too.

Vehicles belonging to private TV channels were attacked. The vehicles of at least three were torched while many more were vandalised. Reporters’ motorcycles were smashed and set on fire.

At dawn on Friday, the air was heavy with smoke and the lingering smell of gunpowder. Rumours spread like wildfire. The area from Jatrabari to Narayanganj’s Signboard Area, the Demra Staff Quarter, Banasree, Rampura, Badda, Mohammadpur-Bosila, and Uttara-Azampur areas had turned into a battlefield.

Police were attacked with brickbat and sharp weapons. Few of the attackers looked like students. After Jummah prayers, chases and counter-chases broke out between BNP activists and law enforcers near the High Court and the Paltan-Topkhana Road area.

Amid the chaos, assailants burst into the metro rail stations at Kazipara and Mirpur-10. They looted, vandalised, and destroyed.

During an inspection of the Mirpur-10 station on Saturday, MAN Siddique, the managing director of the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited said, “There was widespread vandalism at both stations. Everything was pillaged. It may take up to a year to resume operations at these stations.”

On Friday afternoon, fires could be seen on many Dhaka roads. Dividers and uprooted trees had been used to barricade the streets. With brickbats and makeshift weapons on one side and tear gas and rubber bullets on the other, the capital’s hospitals were busy with casualties.

At the end of the day, 36 bodies had piled up at Dhaka Medical. A total of 482 had received treatment for injuries at the hospital. Most of them had been shot. Of these, 155 people were hospitalised.

DHAKA MEDICAL ON FRIDAY

The casualties kept streaming in all day. At one point the Emergency Department stopped treating anyone who had not been injured in the clashes. They were instead sent to the hospital’s new building. Ansar personnel on duty at the hospital blew their whistles, screamed, and used their sticks to try and control the overwhelming crowd. More and more kept coming in on ambulances, autorickshaws, battery-run rickshaws, trucks, and whatever vehicles could be found.

Around 5:30am, a battery-run rickshaw raced in carrying two people supporting a bearded young man. A bullet had hit his left leg and broken the bone. The skin was somehow holding his leg together. Blood had pooled on the footrest of the rickshaw.

His eyes were glazed and out of focus and his body was shaking. Medical workers sprinted out. They screamed that they needed to get a ticket. The counter demanded the patient’s name and age. Somebody said, ‘Write Nayan, age 23. Address: Shonir Akhra.’

People carried Nayan in as someone ran after them carrying a ticket.

The hospital was flooded with many like Nayan, nearly all of them with injuries from bullets or shotgun pellets. At one point, the hospital’s surgery section, observation room, and neuro emergency department were completely clogged with cases. Three people were shoved onto each bed at the observation unit as medical workers shoved saline drips into them.

As it got dark, three people were brought in together from Narayanganj. Doctors declared all three dead. There was no more room in the emergency department and a critical shortage of trolleys. The bodies were immediately laid on the floor to one side and their trolleys freed up for those who could be saved.

A day labourer from Kadamtali lay on the ground next to the bodies with bullets stuck in his leg and lower abdomen and an IV drip in his arm.

Sometime later, blankets were thrown over the bodies and they were taken to the morgue. The nametags read ‘unidentified’.

As night bore down on the hospital, it seemed close to being overwhelmed.

Masudur Rahman, a journalist from the private news channel DBC, came in with shotgun pellets in his head. Doctors referred him from the Emergency Department to Neuro Emergency. As soon as he was seated at Neuro Emergency, there was a massive commotion as a middle-aged man was rushed in.

He was also named Masud, age 52. A bullet had hit the right side of his head, leaving him critically injured. He was unconscious and having trouble breathing. As soon as he entered the room he vomited up blood. They laid him on a stretcher and began fighting with the gauze. Blood was everywhere. Those who had brought him in did not know his blood group. The nurses drew blood from his leg and rushed the group away to try and find a match. They advised them to try and find another donor just in case.

Dr Khalid Saifullah said Masud’s condition was very bad and he could die at any moment. He needed blood quickly and desperately.

Reporter Masud underwent a CT scan. The doctors said the pellets had not reached his skull. He could recover with some medicine. He was sent to a nearby room for dressing the wound.

As soon as he sat for his dressing, a desperate mother and father from Narayanganj’s Fatullah rushed into the room carrying their six-year-old daughter Riya. Some hospital in the area had managed to put a bandage on her wound before sending her parents to another hospital for help.

As he took off the bandage, Dr Khalid let out an involuntary ‘Oh, Allah!’ and closed his eyes. He seemed close to tears. A bullet had struck the back of her head and a section of her brain was visible. The doctors immediately tried to stop the bleeding and cover the wound. They called her father in and said she needed blood.

The child’s parents fell to their knees in front of the doctor. Fighting to hold back his tears, the doctor said, “Please pray. We will do all we can.”

They did not know the child’s blood group. Her father sprinted to get a sample. Her mother broke down in tears on the veranda. There was no one to comfort her.

Her mother said she had gone on the roof to collect the laundry when she suddenly fell to the ground. Her father sprinted to find a torrent of blood leaking from her head.

Many others at the hospitals carried bullet wounds. Some in their lower abdomen, others in the chest, and several in the head.

More and more rickshaws and CNG ferried in more and more patients.

Around 6pm, a CNG autorickshaw brought a young man to the hospital. The medical workers rushed out and asked for his name and age.

Someone said - Omar Faruk, age 23.

As soon as he was taken from the vehicle, one of the hospital workers said, “He’s dead. Shot in the chest.”

Omar Faruk’s name was soon added to the morgue registrar. The third-year student in the Department of History at Kabi Nazrul Islam College was shot in the Dhakar Bazar area.

To help the wounded, a group of young people had set up a ‘blood donation centre’ in the ambulance parking area. Ansar personnel and the young people were repeatedly asking people to donate blood over the megaphone.

Mukta Hijra, from Nazimuddin Road, was holding a placard calling for blood donations. Several members of the Hijra community had come to help. All of them had donated blood.

09:45

CURFEW IMPOSED

As the violence grew out of control, a curfew was announced. Movement was restricted to the public except in case of emergency. The army was deployed in Dhaka from midnight on Friday.

THE SITUATION ON SATURDAY

Even after the curfew was imposed, there were clashes in Dhaka’s Jatrabari, Rayerbag, Demra, Rampura, Banasree, Mohammadpur, and several other areas on Saturday. There wasn’t much traffic on the roads. Army personnel could be seen at every major intersection.

The daylong clashes saw 189 seek treatment at Dhaka Medical. Of them, 76 were hospitalised. By the end of the day, 12 were dead.

Though violence continued throughout the day in some areas, there were no major arson attacks. In addition to the police, RAB, BGB, and army personnel patrolled the Jatrabari, Badda, and Rampura areas.

SUNDAY

Amid the violence, Bangladesh announced public holidays on Sunday and Monday, which were eventually extended to Tuesday.

With support from the army, and amid operations by the police and BGB, the violence eased in the capital. However, intermittent clashes were still reported in Jatrabari, Demra, the Staff Quarters, and Mohammadpur.

A total of 65 people with injuries sought treatment at Dhaka Medical. Of them, 20 were hospitalised. Eight people died from the violence on Sunday. Three of them had previously been hospitalised for their wounds.

MONDAY

There were few reports of violence on Dhaka’s streets on Monday. After two relatively quiet days, people started leaving home for various necessities. During the three hours the curfew was lifted, there was even some of the usual traffic congestion on the capital’s streets.

3 POLICE PERSONNEL, 1 ANSAR KILLED

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that three police personnel were killed amid the violence. A total of 1,117 police personnel were injured in the clashes. Of them, 132 are in serious condition and three are in the ICU.

Rubel Hossain, Ansar Headquarters spokesman, said an Ansar member had been killed and 98 others injured amid the violence. The deceased, Jewel Sheikh, was assigned to the Motijheel Thana. He was killed during a chase and counter-chase.

79 BODIES AT DHAKA MEDICAL, 11 AT SUHRAWARDY

Dhaka Medical Hospital Director Brig Gen Asaduzzaman says 1,071 people were admitted to the hospital in the eight days from Jul 15 to Jul 22.

Of them, 19 died after being admitted to the hospital, he said on Tuesday. Another 60 were brought to the hospital after they were killed to the clashes.

Asked how many of the hospitalised had been shot, he said:

“At first, the injured mostly had injuries from brickbats or sticks. Patients started coming in with gunshot wounds on Thursday. I can say that about half of those injured had sustained bullet injuries.”

Asked about the situation at the hospital amid the violence on Thursday and Friday, he said, “We tried our best to save people with the resources we had. It was a massive challenge to treat so many patients while supplying our staff with the necessary gauze, bandages, and other materials. There was no space in some parts of the hospital.”

“Dhaka Medical almost always has double its capacity of patients. Where could we put such a huge influx of patients? There was no space, there were no beds. I had to stay overnight at the hospital to manage everything.”

The ambulances used to transport doctors did not escape attack either, he said.

“Several hundred doctors live in different parts of the city. We used ambulances to transport them to and fro.”

“An ambulance from Uttara was carrying doctors when it was attacked. The vehicle was damaged, but the doctors were safe. The ambulance driver rushed off when the attack happened.”

Shafiur Rahman, director of Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, said 11 people killed in the clashes had been brought to the hospital. Over 400 had sought treatment. As of Tuesday, 35 patients were still admitted to the hospital.

Victims of the violence were treated at Dhaka’s Mugda, Mitford, Kuwait Friendship, and other public hospitals as well. Many bodies were brought to these hospitals and several people died while receiving treatment there. However, the government has yet to release any official figures.