Four killed, many injured after train travelling from town bordering India set on fire: Official

<p>Dhaka, Jan 5 (PTI): At least four people, including two children, were killed and many injured here on Friday when suspected arsonists set on fire a passenger train coming from Benapole, a port city bordering India, officials said, a day ahead of Bangladesh's general elections that have been boycotted by the main opposition BNP.</p><p>The incident happened around 9 pm when four carriages of the Benapole Express that runs from Benapole, a town bordering the Indian state of West Bengal, were set on fire as it nearly reached its destination of the capital’s Kamalapur Railway Station.</p><p>"So far we have found four bodies . . . searches are still underway," Shahjahan Shikdar, the spokesman of Fire Service and Civil Defence, told newsmen at the scene.</p><p>Railway officials said that most of the train’s nearly 292 passengers were returning home from India and the train was set on fire at 9 PM as it reached the Gopibagh area near the station.</p><p>Fire service chief Brigadier General Mohammad Main Uddin, meanwhile, said two of the dead were minor children.</p><p>“When we tried to bring out a middle-aged man through a window of the train but he asked me to leave him and rather save his wife and children from inside,” a local youth was seen telling the private Jamuna TV.</p><p>He said soon fire engulfed the man's and he died shortly thereafter.</p><p>A report by the Somoy TV said that some Indian nationals were also travelling in the train.</p><p>While the railway officials could not immediately confirm how many people were wounded, private TV channels said that people in the neighbourhood first reached the scene and sent several fire-wounded people to Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s burn unit and some other facilities.</p><p>Bangladesh goes to polls on Sunday. More than 100 foreign observers, including three from India, have reached Dhaka to monitor the general election.</p><p>Led by former prime minister Khalida Zia, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is boycotting the general election as it is demanding an interim non-party neutral government to hold the election.</p><p>The demand was rejected by the government headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is heading the ruling Awami League.</p><p>Foreign Ministry officials said a three-member delegation from the Election Commission of India reached Dhaka on Friday while 122 others from different countries were set to be here ahead of the January 7 polls, which the United Nations said would watch closely.</p><p>Bangladesh witnessed a couple of train related incidents in the recent months.</p><p> Unidentified saboteurs On December 19 set a train ablaze killing four people, among them a mother and child, amid an opposition called countrywide strike on that day.</p><p>One passenger was killed and dozens wounded as saboteurs uprooted railway tracks when seven carriages derailed in Gazipur on the outskirts of the capital in early December.</p><p>On January 2, a train carrying some 300 passengers narrowly averted a major crash at the last minute as suspected saboteurs removed 28 dog spikes or hooks from the tracks on a railway bridge in northern Bangladesh.</p><p>Awami League accused BNP of carrying out the sabotages, which the party denied. PTI AR RUP RUP</p><p><i>(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)</i></p>

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