DHAKA, Nov 26: Opposition supporters in Bangladesh blocked roads and ripped up railway tracks on Tuesday in protest against elections announced for January, leaving seven people dead and plunging the nation into fresh turmoil.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist allies called a 48-hour nationwide transport blockade to press their demand for a suspension of the January 5 poll date announced on Monday evening.

The BNP has urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and make way for a neutral caretaker government to oversee the elections, and has been staging violent protests and strikes around the country to back its demand.

Hasina’s government rejected the demand and the Chief Elections Commissioner pushed ahead with setting the date, urging parties to join the contest for the 300-seat parliament.

Hundreds of opposition protesters took to the streets around the country after the announcement, and clashes resumed on Tuesday with police, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and in some cases live rounds.

“We fired rifles after about 500 protesters attacked us with home-made guns and small bombs,” Abul Khaer, a police official in the eastern district of Comilla, said. Three people were killed in separate clashes in Comilla including a border patrol trooper shot dead by protesters, police said.

A BNP official was shot dead by officers in the northern town of Shahjahanpur, deputy police chief of the region Syed Abu Sayem said.

A protester drowned in neighbouring Sirajganj after he jumped into a pond to escape police tear gas. —AFP