Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service coming to you live from our

studios in Central London I'm Julian Marshall and we begin today in Bangladesh where more than 90 people,

including more than a dozen police officers, are known to have died in clashes

between police and anti-government protesters.

What began last month as student-led protests against civil service job quotas has now

morphed into a more sustained and broader campaign demanding that the Prime Minister

Sheikh Hasina stands down.

Tens of thousands of people rallied in the capital Dhaka and there are calls for even bigger demonstrations

on Monday.

The police use rubber bullets and tear gas and according to some reports live

ammunition to disperse protesters and a curfew is now in force. We'll speak to

a supporter of the protests in a moment, but first Anisulhok, Bangladesh's law minister,

what's his assessment of a day on which so many people lost their lives.

This movement was done by certain political parties, but they had put the children in front as human shields.

So we did not, we were patient, we did not take action against them now it has

turned into and students are not on the street because they are also

opposing we are seeing that militant activists of Jamati Islam, the banned political party and BMP

are on the streets. They are destroying public property. They are destroying private

property without any instigation.

They are doing it indiscriminately.

Today they have attacked police stations in many of the districts of Bangladesh, they have burned the metro station, they have gone into the biggest hospital and tried to burn that place too, when the staff and the patients came out and said,

what the hell are you doing? But again, we are showing restraint. I guess our

...