Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Articles
Bangladeshi paramilitary forces have begun mutinying over pay at barracks across the country after fighting with border guards in the capital Dhaka subsided.
Military sources said sporadic fighting had broken out on Thursday at dozens of barracks for the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), the border security force.
"There's 46 barracks across the country, and there's 50,000 paramilitary soldiers. As we understand from our military sources here, there's sporadic fighting in most of these barracks," Al Jazeera's Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dhaka, said.
"This fighting in these barracks is a huge security issue for the Bangladeshi forces and is being taken very very seriously by the army."
Violence first broke out at the forces' Dhaka headquarters on Wednesday over a pay dispute and other issues.
At least 50 people were reported killed in nearly day-long fighting.
Mohammad Qamrul Islam, the state minister for law and parliamentary affairs, told reporters the guards had started to surrender their arms after he emerged from the headquarters early on Thursday.
"We talked to the BDR troops and they said some 50 officers have been killed," he said, but added that he had not confirmed the deaths.
"We heard that the casualties were kept at a hospital inside the compound."
Hospital doctors confirmed that three bystanders were killed and about 20 people injured in the 20-hour mutiny.
PM intervention
Fifty women and children, who had been stranded at the BDR headquarters when thousands of guards mutinied against their superiors over pay, were freed as the guards surrendered their arms.
The mutineers agreed to lay down their arms after Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, met a group of them at her residence on Wednesday and offered them amnesty.
The prime minister also pledged to look into their demands for better pay.
Wednesday's unrest saw the guards seize their headquarters and a nearby shopping mall, and trap dozens of children in a school.
The army was called in and shut down nearby streets as helicopters kept watch over the area.
Intermittent gunshots rang out for more than four hours, while black smoke billowed from the BDR compound.
Inequality
The guards said they were upset with their superiors for not raising long-standing demands for equal pay and working conditions as army soldiers during Hasina's visit the previous day.
Kailash Budhwar, a London-based South Asia analyst, told Al Jazeera that the mutiny was "most unexpected".
"And it happened from a unit that was supposed to be most disciplined ... a paramilitary force who guard the border," Budhwar said.
"This certainly brings to memory the dark days when there was turmoil and anti-social takeover, and there are other undercurrents in Bangladesh who might take advantage of the situation."
PHOTO CAPTION
Mutinous soldiers of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) are seen inside their headquarters in Dhaka February 26, 2009.
Al-Jazeera
