Three people, including a policeman, were killed and at least 100 people injured Saturday in clashes between police and Muslim hardliners during a one-day general strike in Dhaka, witnesses and police said.
Two unidentified people were killed when a bomb they were carrying exploded in Dhaka's suburban Pallabi area, local police said.
In Dhaka's Mohammadpur area Muslim extremists killed a policeman, whose body was found inside a mosque, police said.
At least 20 people were hurt and the policeman went missing after officers intervened to break up a clash between the extremists and a counter-demonstration supporting a recent court decision to outlaw Muslim religious edicts, or fatwas, in the country.
"We have arrested 50 so far," a police officer said, after raids on two nearby Islamic boarding schools.
People slapped and used sticks to beat the extremists as police hurdled them into waiting vans, witnesses said.
The strike had been called by a Muslim group to protest against the fatwa ban.
In another incident, police fired tear gas and used batons when Muslim protestors tried to block a major highway in nearby Tongi area before Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed traveled through, local police told AFP.
Around 20 people were injured in the incident.
The Muslim activists, many shouting "Allahu Akber" or "God is great," also clashed with police in Dhaka's Postogola area and were dispersed after being charged with tear gas, leaving another 10 hurt, witnesses said.
Police used tear gas against stone throwing extremists who later holed up inside the downtown Baitul Mukarram National Mosque. Police have ringed the mosque and made number of arrests.
In scattered incidents another 50 people were injured and more arrests were being made, police and witnesses said.
The Muslim activists had tried to block entry points to Dhaka early Saturday to stop thousands of people coming to the capital from across Bangladesh to join a pro-democracy and anti-fatwa rally organized mainly by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
However the rally went ahead with organizers claiming some 500,000 joined it, including Bangladesh's top poet Shamsur Rahman.
"We are against those who kill truth and beauty ... (and) who use religion for evil purposes," he said.
"We must be alert to the fact that the ideal of our independence war is under threat" from extremists, he said, referring to secularism.
Khushi Kabir, chief of the Association for Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB), which groups the majority of the NGOs in the country, said the protest was not anti-Muslim.
"This rally is not against Allah or Islam, but was aimed at uprooting those who do business and politics using religion," she told AFP.
Rights groups and other organizations had welcomed the January 1 High Court ruling by Judges Golam Rabbani and Nazmun Ara Sultana, the country's first female High Court judge.
International rights watchdog Amnesty International hailed the court ruling as a "landmark verdict."
The decision was, however, put on temporary hold for six weeks on January 14 by the Supreme Court following an appeal.
The decision banned the use of fatwas, sometimes draconian edicts issued by local village clerics solely on their religious authority in a country where many people are very religious-minded.
The most grisly example of a fatwa being issued was the stoning to death of a young woman in the early 1990s for an alleged "illegal" love affair.
The Election Commission has additionally been investigating allegations that 4,000 women from 12 villages in the western district of Jhenidah were barred from voting for 85 years due to a religious edict -- DHAKA (AFP)
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