DHAKA, June 13: Towns and cities across Bangladesh came to a standstill on Tuesday as opposition parties demanding electoral reforms enforced a national strike. Shops, private offices, schools and colleges were closed and cars were off the road, officials told AFP.

The 36-hour national strike, beginning at dawn on Tuesday, follows a mass protest in Dhaka on Sunday.

It is the latest in a series of protests by an alliance of 14 opposition parties led by the Awami League.

In Dhaka, thousands of police and paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles troopers were on stand-by.

Regional cities were also at a halt.

The Awami League has threatened to call indefinite strikes and boycott the next parliamentary election, scheduled for January 2007, if its demands for electoral reforms are not met.

—AFP