DHAKA: Mutinous members of a paramilitary unit in the Bangladeshi capital laid down their arms yesterday as tanks surrounded their headquarters after a second day of gunfire in a mutiny that killed about 50 people.
Government officials and police said the mutiny in Dhaka was under control and urged members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border guards who had mutinied elsewhere in the country over pay and command issues to lay down their arms.
Gunfire in the capital gradually subsided and stopped after Prime Minister Hasina Wajed threatened tough action in a national broadcast, a day after offering mutineers an amnesty.
“All the rebel troops have surrendered with their arms and the process has been completed,” Hasina’s media spokesman, Abul Kalam Azad, said of the BDR troops in the capital.
At least 20 government tanks and 15 armored personnel carriers ringed the BDR headquarters in Dhaka, where nearly 50 people were killed in Wednesday’s violence.
Hundreds of BDR mutineers handed in their weapons, including automatic rifles, machine guns and grenades, to police who locked the weapons inside two armories in the BDR complex.
“Police have locked the armories and handed me the keys after the troops completed the surrender,” Home Minister Sahara Khatun told reporters outside the BDR headquarters, where the mutiny broke out Wednesday.
Shooting there and nearby accounted for all known deaths. Among the dead were eight army officers and six civilians, police said. Private Channel-I television, quoting unnamed security officials, reported yesterday that 168 army officers were present at the meeting at the BDR headquarters when the shooting started.
“Eight of them have been found dead, 22 have been rescued alive but the others including the paramilitary chief, Maj. Gen. Sakil Ahmed, are missing,” Channel-I said.
Some security sources and the media said Sakil and his family might have been killed during the mutiny, but there was no official comment.
Hundreds of regular soldiers in battledress surrounded the BDR headquarters as the surrender was completed. About 60 BDR soldiers who tried to flee the compound were arrested, and 200 BDR officers and their families held hostage inside the complex were released safely, police said.
A special police squad was due to search the sprawling BDR complex for hidden weapons and hostages, officials said.
The turmoil underscores the challenges facing Hasina, who took office last month after winning parliamentary elections in December that returned Bangladesh to democracy after nearly two years of army-backed emergency rule.
Shooting incidents involving BDR troops erupted in more than a dozen other towns yesterday, local police said, but Reuters reporters later said calm was returning.
Bangladesh has had several military coups since independence in 1971, but this week’s mutinies are over pay, benefits and the command structure, not politics.
