Bangladesh TV: Dozens of bodies found after mutiny

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-27 20:09

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A Bangladeshi general says authorities have found dozens of bodies buried in mass graves after a two-day revolt against military officers. The mutiny reportedly left at least 40 people dead.

Army soldiers sit atop a tank parked in the streets in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, February 26, 2009. [Agencies]

Brig. Abu Naim Shahidullah told private television station NTV they were "digging out dozens of decomposing bodies dumped into mass graves."

He is overseeing the search for corpses and said he did not yet have an updated death toll. He says all the victims appear to be officers and were dressed in military uniforms.

Security forces have detained hundreds of fleeing border guards and set up roadblocks across the country since the bloody uprising against military commanders by the country's border guard unit.

The border guards, whose unit rose up against their commanders earlier this week, have been promised amnesty, but it was not clear if that would apply to guards who fled their bases.

Soon after tanks rolled into Dhaka and intimidated the mutinous border guards, who had seized their main compound in the capital, into laying down their arms, many mutineers fled under cover of darkness, according to Abdul Kashem, an official of the mutinous Bangladesh Rifles, the official name of the paramilitary border force.

Commander A.K. Azad, a spokesman for the elite Rapid Action Battalion, said more than 230 mutineers, most dressed in civilian clothing, were rounded up Thursday night on the outskirts of Dhaka. Another battalion official, M. Morshed, said security forces had arrested 68 more mutineers near the town of Savar, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Dhaka.

Security forces have set up highway checkpoints to search buses, and are also searching ferries as they look for more mutineers, officials said.

Dozens of families, particularly those related to senior border guard officers, still did not know what had happened to their relatives, and they gathered Thursday as authorities continued to retrieve bodies from the main border guard base.

"Let me talk to my father. Where is my father?" cried 10-year-old Mohammad Rakib, standing outside the devastated headquarters of the border agency. Rakib was with his mother looking for his father, Capt. Mohammad Shamim.

Nearly 2,000 guards opened fire on their senior officers and seized their headquarters in the capital Wednesday to protest poor pay and conditions.

Fire official Dilip Kumar Ghosh said 34 people were rescued after the mutineers surrendered and firefighters were searching for at least 65 more missing people.

Ghosh said two of the bodies, a man and a woman, were found at the home of the border force's chief, Maj. Gen. Shakil Ahmed, but that the commander was not one of them.

One officer said earlier that he saw Ahmed killed immediately after the mutiny began Wednesday.

"I was confronted by the soldiers three times, but I have survived," that officer, Lt. Col. Syed Kamruzzaman, told ATN Bangla television station. "Allah has saved me from the face of death."

Authorities would not comment on the chief's whereabouts.

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