Bangladesh student protests: Fresh violence erupts; govt websites hacked

Television news channels in Bangladesh were off the air and telecommunications were widely disrupted on Friday amid violent student protests against quotas for government jobs in which nearly two dozen people have been killed this week.

There was no immediate word from the government.

French news agency AFP reported that the death toll in Thursday's violence had risen to 32. Reuters had reported that 13 people were killed, adding to six dead earlier in the week, and could not immediately verify the higher number.

There was fresh violence in some parts of the country on Friday and police were using tear gas to disperse protesters, a Reuters photographer said.

India's Economic Times newspaper reported that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government "was forced" to call in the army late on Thursday to help "maintain order". Reuters could not independently verify the information.

Although the protests were sparked by student anger against the controversial quota system, some analysts have said that tough economic conditions, including high inflation, rising unemployment and depleting foreign reserves, were providing fuel to the fire.

No calls, data

Authorities had cut some mobile services on Thursday to try to quell the unrest but the disruption spread across the country on Friday morning, Reuters witnesses in Dhaka and New Delhi said.

Telephone calls from overseas were mostly not getting connected and calls through the Internet could not be completed.

Web sites of several Bangladesh-based newspapers were not updating on Friday morning and their social media handles were also not active.

Only some voice calls were working in the country and there was no mobile data or broadband on Friday morning, a Reuters photographer in Dhaka said. Even SMSes or mobile-to-mobile text messages were not going through, he added.

News television channels and state broadcaster BTV were off the air while entertainment channels continued normal transmission, a Reuters witness said.

Some news channels displayed a message which said they were not able to broadcast due to technical reasons and that programming would be back soon, the witness said.

Websites hacked: 'Stop killing students'

Streets in the capital Dhaka were deserted on Friday, which is a weekly holiday in the country. There was little traffic and very few rickshaw pullers on the streets and thin crowds near a vegetable and fish market, he said, adding that a protest rally had been called at the main mosque at around 0800 GMT.

The official web sites of the Bangladesh central bank, the prime minister's office and police appeared to have been hacked by a group calling itself "THE R3SISTANC3".

“Operation HuntDown, Stop Killing Students,” it said in identical messages on both sites, adding in bright red font: "It's not a protest anymore, it's a war now.”

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