04 July 2004	Sunday	15 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

DHAKA, July 3: Shops were closed and private vehicles off the roads Saturday as Bangladesh was shut down by its 12th anti-government strike by the opposition in six months.

Fifteen women activists and an MP from the main opposition Awami League party were arrested following a scuffle with police in the capital Dhaka, but there were no reports of violence.

The strike was called to protest a bomb attack at a rally of an Awami League lawmaker last month in northeastern Bangladesh where one person died and up to 50 were injured.

Since February, the Awami League has enforced a series of general strikes, a common form of protest in Bangladesh, despite appeals from business leaders and foreign donors.

The critics say the impoverished country can ill afford the 60 million dollars each strike is estimated to cost in lost business and productivity.

Earlier strikes were called as part of a stepped-up campaign by the Awami League to oust the government, a four-party Islamist-allied coalition led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

The opposition accused the government of failing to improve law and order but the government said it was working hard to address a grim situation inherited from the last Awami League government. -AFP