One man was killed and several wounded during a gun-battle between rival activists as a third opposition-led general strike in less than a week shut businesses, transport and schools in Bangladesh on Monday.
The unidentified man died of gunshot wounds after he was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital from the city's outskirts, doctors said. Witnesses said several people were wounded in the shootout.
A police officer said the man was sitting in a restaurant when a stray bullet hit him.
The strike provoked clashes at a number of places in the capital and elsewhere and around 70 people were detained. Three former ministers forced their way into police vans and refused to leave to protest the arrests of opposition party supporters.
Former home, information and law ministers - Mohammad Nasim, Abu Sayeed and Abdul Matin Khasru- jumped into the police vans at the city's Dhanmandi area, while dozens of opposition activists were being driven away, witnesses said.
"We will not leave the vans until other people detained are freed. This is a protest against illegal detentions during a peaceful strike," Nasim told Reuters by his mobile phone from the police van.
Nasim said the two other former ministers also "courted arrest" for the same reasons.
Police confirmed the protest by the ex-ministers but said they had not been detained or arrested.
"They threw themselves up into police cars and declined to get down," said a police offer who asked not to be named. "We are still trying to persuade them to go home," he added.
The main opposition Awami League called Monday's strike, the third in five days, as part of a campaign to topple Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia.
Authorities deployed hundreds of extra police and paramilitary troops in the capital Dhaka and in the port city of Chittagong to the south to try to avert violence.
Witnesses said police detained about 40 protesters during raids in and around Awami's main party office in Dhaka. At least 30 others were detained elsewhere, witnesses said.
"Police stormed the Awami League central office in Dhaka this morning and beat and detained our people in there," said Asaduzzaman Noor, the party's publicity secretary. "We strongly denounce such excesses."
A police officer on the scene said police have been ordered to ensure against the spread of violent protests across the city. "So we are picking up suspected troublemakers."
Streets were mostly empty and shops, schools and businesses shut across the country. Ferries and trains moved normally, transport operators said.
The strike also halted deliveries from Chittagong, which handles 80 percent of the country's external trade, port officials said on Monday.
Business leaders say each day of production lost to strikes - called frequently by the opposition - costs the impoverished country at least $60 million.
The Awami League enforced daylong strikes across the country last Thursday and Saturday.
Khaleda told a rally in the north-east on Sunday that police had been asked to protect lives and property.
"The repeated strikes called by Awami League have been designed to harm the country and its people," she said. "I would like to say categorically that any trouble-mongers will be punished."
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