Dhaka: Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s another daylong nationwide hartal for fourth straight day was observed in a relaxed manner across the country on Thursday.

In the early morning, Jamaat-Shibir activists took to the streets and started picketing activities in district towns and also in some capital city areas and they also took out processions drawing attention of police and other law enforcing agencies to chase them.  

Pro-hartal pickets also blasted several cocktails and crude bombs at Lalbagh at about 8:05am and one crude bomb at Mirpur-2 at about 8.00am.

Vehicular movement on the city streets was almost normal but no long-route buses left or entered the capital city.

Law enforcers took position at the important points and were patrolling the city streets to fend off any possible trouble by hartal supporters.

Besides the ones uniformed, plainclothes police were also there on alert with video and still cameras at different strategic points of the city to identify troublemakers during the daylong shutdown.

In Natore, hartal activists brought out a procession supporting the strike and made a fire on a road by pouring petrol in Harishpur area of the town in the morning.

Later, police foiled their procession.

There was no report of any violent incident from elsewhere.

Earlier, Jamaat-e-Islami enforced daylong shutdowns on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that were marked by the killing of nine people, vandalism, arrests, bomb explosions and ransacking and torching of vehicles.

Jamaat acting secretary general Rafiqul Islam Khan in a statement on Wednesday called the hartal after the tribunal awarded death sentence to Ali Ahasan Mohammad Mujahid.

Rafiqul Islam said they are enforcing the hartal in protest against ‘judicial conspiracy of killing’ against Mujahid.

The Islamist party observed another two daylong shutdowns on Monday and Tuesday following the ICT-1’s verdict against Jamaat former chief Ghulam Azam. The hartals were marked by the killing of at least nine people, vandalism, arrests, explosions of crude bombs and ransacking and torching of vehicles in the last three days.

On Tuesday's hartal in protest against Ghulam Azam verdict at least four people were killed in Satkhira, Dinajpur and Gazipur.

On Monday five people were killed in hartal violence after pronouncement of Ghulam Azam verdict handing him 90 years imprisonment untill death.

Jamaat also enforced hartal on the days the tribunals had pronounced verdicts against its leaders Quader Mollah, Delwar Hossain Sayedee and Muhammad Kamaruzzaman.

On Tuesday, a joint bench of Judge Obaidul Hasan and also chairman of the International Crimes Tribunal-2 (ICT-2) announced that it would give verdict in the case against Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid on Wednesday for his alleged crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.

Ends/AMA/18/07/13