DHAKA, Aug 15: Police and activists fought running battles and at least 50 people were injured during a half-day strike in Bangladesh called to demand the execution of the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family were killed in an army coup on Aug 15, 1975.

Activists from the the Awami League threw stones at police as they fired teargas shells and used batons to try to disperse the demonstrators, one witness said.

“It was one hell of a battle going on,” he told Reuters, adding that at least eight people were rushed to hospital.

Some reporters on the scene put the number of injured between 50 and 100, and police said some of their constables were also injured and needed treatment.

The violence occurred outside the Awami League’s head office in the capital Dhaka, where the activists gathered to lay wreaths under portraits of independence leader Mujib, whose daughter Sheikh Hasina is a former prime minister and head of Awami.

In Dhaka, roads were largely empty of buses, the city’s main transport, but three-wheeled rickshaws and security vans carrying armed police moved around.

The Awami League called the strike from sunrise to noon to press for immediate execution of Majib’s convicted killers.

Mujib’s wife and three sons were also killed in the 1975 coup. Another daughter, Sheikh Rehana, survived. She and her sister were travelling abroad at the time.

Awami supporters are also protesting against a government decision to cancel an Aug 15 public holiday Sheikh Hasina introduced when she was prime minister.

Her rival, Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, believes her husband, former president General Ziaur Rahman, is the country’s independence leader instead of Mujib, and cancelled the holiday after she won elections last October.

“We are going to make the strike a strong warning for the government that we will not tolerate any whimsical decision of the government. Awami League has a history of not bowing to anything illegal,” said Saidul Hasan, an Awami activist, while laying wreaths on Thursday in Dhaka at the party’s head office.

Party officials also flew the national flag at half mast at the main office and at Mujib’s Dhaka home. Police did not intervene.

The Awami League says it is dismayed over the long delay in executing 12 former army officers who had been sentenced to death by the country’s highest court in April last year for killing Mujib.

Only four of the convicts are in custody. The others have absconded, police said.

The strike shut many offices but brokers said trading on the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges was expected to resume in the afternoon.

Delivery of goods from the Chittagong port was disrupted on Thursday morning because lorries did not operate, port officials said.—Reuters