Police yesterday said they have arrested four men in connection with the bombing of a Muslim shrine that killed three people and injured about 100, including the British ambassador to Bangladesh.
British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury suffered a leg injury in the blast during noon prayers Friday at Hazrat Shahjalal shrine in Sylhet.
The four suspects were detained late Friday, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. He did not elaborate.
Three of those detained are members of the student wing of the country's main opposition party, the Awami League, private TV station ATN Bangla reported.
Sylhet Mayor Badruddin Ahmed Kamran, an Awami League leader, denied the students were involved in the attack.
"The government is using the violence to crack down on the opposition," he said.
Choudhury was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Dhaka. Choudhury, 44, was visiting the shrine after assuming his post last week.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast in Sylhet, 190km northeast of Dhaka.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia expressed "deep shock" at the blast and conveyed "sympathy to the British envoy and other injured people," her office said.
The Awami League has accused police of security lapses and planned to hold protests in Sylhet yesterday.
In January, a bomb killed five worshippers at the shrine. Police had no suspects despite questioning more than 20 people detained after the blast.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga