by Helen Rowe
DHAKA, Aug 22 (AFP) - Bangladeshi political activists launched protests and staged a strike Sunday as an aide said the main opposition party's leader had narrowly escaped assassination in a grenade attack which left 18 people dead.
Police patrolled the streets of a tense Dhaka following Saturday's violence which Sheikh Hasina Wajed, a former prime minister and head of the opposition Awami League, escaped from with minor leg injuries.
Traffic was light on the city's roads due to fears of a repeat of overnight clashes between police and political activists angered by the attacks who set cars alight and damaged property, witnesses said.
Officers in riot gear blocked off the area around the party headquarters, where Sheikh Hasina's car had been raked with gunfire after grenades were lobbed into a crowd listening to her give a speech, the witnesses added.
"A series of grenades went off at five to seven-second intervals giving the attackers smoke cover; as she was rushed away by bodyguards, her bullet-proof car was hit by at least seven bullets," Sheikh Hasina's political secretary, Saber Hussain Chowdhury, told AFP.
"She came as close as you can possibly come to being assassinated. It was a well planned assassination attempt because even as she was herded into the vehicle, shots were fired. It was a very well coordinated and well thought out attack.
"Only the fact the vehicle was bullet-proof saved her," he said, adding that one of those killed was a bodyguard hit as he shielded Sheikh Hasina, a former Prime Minister, who was very slightly injured in the legs.
"It was total carnage, worse than a scene from a war film, with bodies, limbs and blood everywhere," he said, adding that 18 were now confirmed dead.
Chowdhury said there were eight explosions and police later found three more unexploded grenades.
Doctors at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where many of the wounded were taken, told AFP Sunday they were still treating 19 people, 13 of whom were seriously injured.
An unknown number of people, however, had gone to private clinics and other hospitals, the doctors added. They included a senior female party member who, according to media reports Sunday, has had both legs amputated.
Following the blasts, hundreds of people, many covered in blood, crowded the corridors of hospitals in Dhaka for treatment as doctors struggled to cope with those most seriously injured.
In the southeastern port city of Chittagong, 208 kilometres (130 miles) from Dhaka, news of the attacks sent hundreds of Awami League activists on the rampage, overturning and setting fire to cars, a police spokesman told AFP Sunday.
He said 230 people had been arrested following the disturbances.
Awami League leaders in the city called a one-day dawn to dusk general strike for Sunday to protest the attacks, keeping cars off the roads and shops and the city's port closed, an AFP correspondent said.
The Awami League has announced a two-day-countrywide general strike on August 24 and 25 to protest the attack.
In other cities Sunday, Awami League activists staged spontaneous demonstrations shouting anti-government slogans, media reports said.
Shopkeepers closed fearing trouble but there were no reports of any serious clashes.
The government, a four-party coalition led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has strongly condemned the bombing.
In a statement issued to the official news agency BSS, BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan described the attack as "barbaric and regrettable"
The attack follows a series of bomb blasts in the northeastern city of Sylhet this year.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.