At least four people were killed and many injured after suspected arsonists set on fire a passenger train coming from the port town of Benapole, bordering India, in the country’s national capital on Friday, two days ahead of Bangladesh’s general elections that have been boycotted by the main opposition BNP, officials said.
The incident happened around 9 pm when four carriages of the Benapole Express that runs from Benapole, a town bordering the Indian state of West Bengal, were set on fire as it nearly reached its destination of the capital’s Kamalapur Railway Station.
“So far we have found four bodies . . . searches are still underway,” Shahjahan Shikdar, the spokesman of Fire Service and Civil Defence, told newsmen at the scene.
Railway officials said that most of the train’s nearly 292 passengers were returning home from India and the train was set on fire at 9 PM as it reached the Gopibagh area near the station.
When we tried to bring out a middle-aged man through a window of the train but he asked me to leave him and rather save his wife and children from inside, a local youth was seen telling the private Jamuna TV.
