The BNP-led 20-Party Alliance’s 72-hour shutdown has been extended by another two days.
Published : 17 Feb 2015, 06:31 PM
The extension has been announced in a statement issued by the BNP Joint Secretary General Salahuddin Ahmed.
The statement said along with the blockade sponsored by the coalition, general strike also had been extended from Wednesday 6am to Friday 6am.
BNP and its coalition partners have started enforcing shutdowns on working days since the beginning of February. Besides, the alliance has also been enforcing an indefinite blockade since Jan 5 to press for snap polls under a neutral caretaker body.
In the past two weeks, the party extended the duration of its shutdown twice. First the shutdown was called for 72-hour starting from Sunday and then it was extended to Thursday evening.
The statement was issued from an undisclosed location under the signature of Salahuddin Ahmed. The signature was cut and pasted from another document.
After the arrest of BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Jan 31, Salahuddin took his place and the party is since then circulating statements using his signature.
Salahuddin, however, was not seen in public for weeks.
No leader of the coalition is however willing to talk to media about their agitation programme.
According to the government, 55 people were killed and 556 injured in bomb attacks, mostly petrol bombs, on vehicles during the ongoing blockade.
The blockaders gutted 664 vehicles and 28 establishments, vandalised 410 vehicles while there were 25 incidents of sabotages in railways and six in the waterways.
The agitation of BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami coalition is also hampering the ongoing Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent examinations.