Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and left the country on Monday, media reports said, as more people were killed in some of the worst violence since the birth of the South Asian nation more than five decades ago.
Visuals broadcast on Bangladeshi TV channels showed protesters storming Hasina’s palace, overturning furniture, smashing glass door panels, and carrying off books and other items, including a live chicken.
“I am inside the Ganabhaban Palace,” Bangladeshi journalist Yeasir Arafat said. “There are more than 1,500 people inside the palace. They are breaking furniture and glasses”.
A source close to Hasina said that the 76-year-old had left Dhaka with her sister for “a safer place”, adding that she had “wanted to record a speech, but she could not get an opportunity to do that.”
The Prothom Alo daily also reported Hasina had fled the capital.
Hasina’s son urged the country’s security forces to block any takeover from her rule, while a senior adviser said her resignation was a “possibility” after being questioned whether she would quit.
Bangladesh’s army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman will address the nation on Monday afternoon, a military spokesman said, without giving further details.
Waker told officers on Saturday that the military “always stood by the people”, according to an official statement.
The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.
Rallies that began last month against civil service job quotas have escalated into some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year rule and shifted into wider calls for the 76-year-old to leave.
“Your duty is to keep our people safe and our country safe and to uphold the constitution,” her son, US-based Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said in a post on Facebook.
“It means don’t allow any unelected government to come in power for one minute, it is your duty.”
But protesters on Monday defied security forces enforcing a curfew, marching on the capital’s streets after the deadliest day of unrest since demonstrations erupted last month.
Internet access was tightly restricted on Monday, offices were closed and more than 3,500 factories servicing Bangladesh’s economically vital garment industry were shut.
Soldiers and police with armoured vehicles in Dhaka had barricaded routes to Hasina’s office with barbed wire, reporters said, but vast crowds flooded the streets, tearing down barriers.
The Business Standard newspaper estimated as many as 400,000 protesters were on the streets, but it was impossible to verify the figure.
“The time has come for the final protest,” said Asif Mahmud, one of the key leaders in the nationwide civil disobedience campaign.
At least 94 people were killed on Sunday, including 14 police officers.
Protesters and government supporters countrywide battled each other with sticks and knives, and security forces opened fire.
The day’s violence took the total number of people killed since protests began in early July to at least 300, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.
“The shocking violence in Bangladesh must stop,” United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
“This is an unprecedented popular uprising by all measures,” said Ali Riaz, an Illinois State University politics professor and expert on Bangladesh.
“Also, the ferocity of the state actors and regime loyalists is unmatched in history.”
Protesters in Dhaka on Sunday were seen climbing a statue of Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence leader, and smashing it with hammers, according to verified social media videos.
In several cases, soldiers and police did not intervene to stem Sunday’s protests, unlike during the past month of rallies that repeatedly ended in deadly crackdowns.
“Let’s be clear: The walls are closing in on Hasina: She’s rapidly losing support and legitimacy,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, said.
“The protests have taken on immense momentum, fuelled by raw anger but also by the confidence that comes with knowing that so much of the nation is behind them,” he said.
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Several students killed during protests against civil service job quotas in Bangladesh
Several students killed during protests against civil service job quotas in Bangladesh
In a hugely symbolic rebuke of Hasina, a respected former army chief demanded the government “immediately” withdraw troops and allow protests.
“Those who are responsible for pushing people of this country to a state of such an extreme misery will have to be brought to justice,” ex-army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan told reporters on Sunday.
The anti-government movement has attracted people from across society in the South Asian nation of about 170 million people, including film stars, musicians and singers.
Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began over the reintroduction of a quota scheme that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.
The protests have escalated despite the scheme having been scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court.
