Thousands of people mounted furious protests after dozens of copies of the Holy Quran were burned in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, leaving several officers injured, police said on Monday.
Police said they fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse a crowd of “at least 10,000 people” overnight from Sunday to Monday as they tried to attack the two men accused of destroying copies of the holy book, police officer Ajbahar Ali Shaikh told AFP.
Another police officer said at least 14 policemen were injured in the clashes, but did not have details of injuries among protesters.
The two men were arrested in the northeastern city of Sylhet — one of the most conservative parts of Bangladesh — and said that they had burned the Holy Quran as they were “very old and some had printing mistakes”.
Shaikh, naming the accused as school principal Nurur Rahman and Mahbub Alam, said police had “seized 45 copies of the burned Holy Quran”.—AFP
