Bangladesh: Four killed in capital train coach fire

The incident took place around 5:00 a.m. local time amid a countrywide strike called by the country's largest opposition party to press its demand for the government to resign ahead of the national election next month.

Bangladeshi Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan told journalists that three firefighting units rushed to the scene and recovered the bodies from one of the three coaches. Meanwhile, several people were hurt while scrambling out of the train.

Bangladesh's main opposition party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies have called for the dawn-to-dusk strike on Tuesday with the Jan. 7 general election approaching.

The opposition movement has reportedly led to vandalism of vehicles and arson attacks, with deadly clashes between police and workers in Dhaka and elsewhere in the South Asian country almost every day since late October.

On Dec. 13, one person was killed when seven compartments of a train derailed on an overpass in Gazipur near the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.

The train derailed after a section of the railway line in Gazipur was allegedly severed by saboteurs due to the ongoing opposition movement.