Bangladeshi mobs torching TV stations, protesters lounging in beds in the premier’s home and bloody corpses: eyewitness described chaotic scenes after the country’s prime minister was ousted yesterday and the military took power.
For some, the end of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year-rule was something to celebrate, as they waved flags from the rooftop of her home after she fled the country by helicopter.
“I can’t express my feelings in words, I’m so happy,” Mohamed Bashir, 35, one of the millions of Bangladeshis who flooded the streets after the army chief declared he was forming a caretaker government.
“Now my only wish is to take care of all the families of the killed people and students, and to deliver justice.”
Messages flooded social media with people greeting each other on Facebook by saying; “Happy Independence Day.”
But in the corridors of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, bodies were lying in pools of blood, among at least 56 people killed yesterday in the dramatic culmination of more than a month of deadly protests that have left 356 dead.
Among the 44 bodies in the hospital, many of them young men, almost all had bullet wounds.
Police said some of their officers were also killed.
Crowds took their revenge on the fallen leader.
Some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero after the war that split the nation from Pakistan in 1971.
Others set a museum to him on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely unthinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.
Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses said.
Hundreds of people stormed the parliament building, with broadcasters showing protesters cheering wildly, jumping on tables, and setting off what appeared to be smoke bombs.
Sazid Ahnaf, 21, was among those on the streets of Dhaka, calling the toppling of Hasina a “proud moment”.
“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” he said, comparing the events to the independence war against Pakistan.
“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971, and now seeing in 2024.”
What began as a student movement against civil service job quotes spiralled into mass protests demanding that Hasina quit.
A key symbolic target of protesters was the premier’s official residence, a sprawling palace in the heart of the capital.
