IANS/Dhaka

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday narrowly escaped a bomb blast which occurred in a Dhaka neighbourhood minutes after her convoy passed the area, media reports said.
Several crude bombs exploded in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar area only 10 minutes after the prime minister’s convoy passed, bdnews24.com reported citing a police official.
The official added that one police personnel received minor injuries in the blasts, though he was “fine and is still on duty”.
Hasina crossed the area on her way to the capital’s Suhrawardy Udyan to attend a rally organised by the ruling Awami League, which she leads.
The blasts occurred amid a transport blockade and shutdown across Bangladesh, enforced by the Khaleda Zia-led opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies.
Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s 20-party opposition alliance, which boycotted the general election held on January 5 last year, has enforced a non-stop nationwide blockade since January 5 and shutdowns since February this year, demanding fresh parliamentary polls under a non-party caretaker
government system.
More than 100 people have been killed so far in the ensuing political violence and most of them have been killed in fire bomb attacks on public vehicles. Frequent bomb blasts, arson attacks and numerous strikes have crippled normal life in Bangladesh.
PM SLAMS BNP LEADER: Addressing an Awami League rally in the capital, the prime minister yesterday said the government is showing utmost patience to make Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Khaleda Zia understand the consequences of her destructive politics and killing of innocent people.
She said Zia is giving directives from her office to her party leaders across the country to continue the killing and petrol bomb attacks. Every miscreant behind the incidents of arson and petrol bomb attack belongs to BNP, Jamaat or their student and youth fronts, she said.
“So it’s a matter of time when the BNP leader will face trial for those killings side by side punishment in the ongoing corruption cases,” Hasina said.
Ruling Awami League organised the rally to commemorate the historic public address by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on March 7, 1971, in which he called Bengali people for waging all-out struggle against
Pakistani forces.
Prime Minister Hasina, who presided over the rally as the president of Awami League, criticised the so-called intellectuals who are reluctant to hold Zia responsible for the current political violence, saying, those who would try to protect the killers would be charged with aiding and abetting the killers and bomb attackers.
She said Bangladesh would certainly move on defying the bomb attacks and orchestrated conspiracy of BNP and anti-liberation forces and none would be able to distract the nation from its cherished goal of development.