Chittagong: Two Chittagong University students were killed and around 40 others injured in fierce clashes between Islami Chhatra Shibir and Bangladesh Chhatra League activists on the campus yesterday.
While Shibir, a pro-Jamaat-e-Islami student organisation, claimed both the victims to be its members, BCL said one of them was an activist of the pro-Awami League student body.
The dead, Masud bin Habib, a student of English, was the general secretary of Shibir’s Suhrawardy Hall unit and Mujahidul Islam, a student of Zoology, was an activist.
Fearing further tension on the campus, the CU authorities shut the university till February 16 and ordered all resident students to vacate the halls by 11:00am today.
It all began with an altercation between Shibir activist Al-Amin and BCL activist Sharier Shahin, both second year students of Islamic history, teachers and witnesses said.
The injured students were initially taken to CU Medical Centre. Of them, 15 were shifted to Chittagong Medical College Hospital where Masud and Mujahidul were declared dead.
Their bodies bore marks of injury all over, including from beating and stabbing, police said.
Talking to The Daily Star, BCL and Shibir leaders blamed one another for the violence.
The BCL activists swooped on the Shibir supporters with lethal weapons, he said, adding that some BCL men stabbed Al-Amin over a trifle. He also accused the BCL activists of opening fire at them.
“We’re preparing to file a case in this connection,” he said.
However, MA Khaled Chowdhury, general secretary of BCL’s CU unit, said the clash began after the Shibir men cut the veins of Sharier and five other BCL supporters.
He added the Shibir men created the violence to occupy the campus when most BCL activists were in Dhaka to attend a central committee programme.
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