AT LEAST 109 people were killed in Bangladesh yesterday during violent unrest in the streets following the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has fled to India.

It was the deadliest day of violence in Bangladesh since protests began over a controversial government jobs quota for veterans of the 1970s War of Independence and their descendants last month.

Shortly after Hasina fled, thousands of protesters – predominantly undergraduate students – raided her official residence as thousands of others gathered and took to the streets in protests and celebration.

Bangladesh’s army chief is due to meet student protest leaders later today after the military took control of an interim government yesterday.

The protestors, who pressured Hasina, who led the country for 15 years, to leave after weeks of deadly clashes resulted in hundreds losing their lives, have said they want academic Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.

“In Dr. Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook ahead of the expected meeting with the army chief today.

Yunus has not commented on the call, but in an interview with India’s The Print, he said Bangladesh had been “an occupied country” under Hasina.

“Today all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated,” Yunus said, it reported.

The protest movement was largely organised and spearheaded by students in opposition of a controversial Government jobs quota for patriotic veterans and their descendants. 

The culturally-sensitive issue has been a point of contention between Bangladesh’s former government and young voters for many years.

The legally-binding jobs quota – which was repealed in 2018 – made it so that 30% of veterans, and their descendants, of the Bangladesh war of independence in the 1970s fill government jobs.

Hasina and her autocratic Awami League party, of whom many of the descendants are politically aligned with or members of, attempted to reintroduce the quota earlier this year after a high court judgment.

But protestors, made up of young undergrad students, claimed that the quota was undemocratic and prioritised ‘yes men’ or government advocates for the, often times, highly-sought-after state jobs.

- With reporting by © AFP 2023