Bangladesh police clashed with members of the main opposition Awami League as a country-wide general strike called by the party took hold early on Sunday. The strike, called after a Friday mob attack on a convoy of cars carrying opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, coincides with the anniversary celebrations of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which the opposition has blamed for the attack.

"The situation is very tense and could turn violent if the activists of the rival parties faced down during the strike," one police officer said. "We are on a high alert."

Witnesses said around 20 activists of Hasina's Awami League party, including three women, were detained after they clashed with police outside the party's head office in Dhaka.

Some protesters suffered minor injuries as police used batons to disperse them, photographers on the scene said.

Awami leaders said police cordoned off the party office and chased away activists gathering outside.

"Police also detained more than 200 of our party workers in Dhaka and elsewhere on Saturday night trying to foil the strike," senior Awami leader and former foreign minister Abdus Samad Azad said by telephone.

Police also raided homes of several former ministers late on Saturday, Azad said but gave no details.

Authorities deployed over 5,000 police and kept paramilitary troops on standby in the capital Dhaka as the strike shut most transport, schools, businesses and many offices.

Brokers said trading on the country's two stock exchanges in Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong were suspended. Handling and delivery of cargo at the Chittagong port, which deals with 80 percent of Bangladesh's external trade, were also disrupted, port officials said.

The Awami League party called the strike to protest the Friday mob attack on the convoy of cars carrying former prime minister Hasina and some of her colleagues.

No one was injured in the attack, which Hasina's political secretary Saber Hossain Chowdhury said was pre-planned and carried out by activists of the BNP.

The BNP, headed by Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, dismissed the allegation, saying the strike was intended to disrupt the BNP's founding anniversary celebrations on Sunday.

"The strike is a sinister move to disrupt BNP's founding anniversary," party secretary-general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan told reporters. He asked party activists and supporters to carry on planned programmes.

Strikes over political disputes and charges of persecution of rivals by ruling parties have been a routine feature in impoverished Bangladesh.

Business leaders have said each day of strike cost the country more than 60 million dollars in lost production and exports, and have asked politicians to find an alternative means of protest.

Sunday's strike, which began at 6 a.m. (0000 GMT) and would last until evening, might also disrupt flights and movement of trains and ferries, transport operators said.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Bangladeshi police keeps watch on a strike-bound street in Dhaka on September 1, 2002. Bangladesh police clashed with members of the main opposition Awami League as a country-wide general strike called by the party took hold early on Sunday. REUTERS/Rafiqur