DHAKA, 18 July 2006 — Thousands of students clashed on a university campus in Dhaka yesterday, leaving more than 100 people injured, police and witnesses said.

The campus violence erupted as student activists of the Jamaat -e- Islami attacked a rally organized by the opposition secular Bangladesh Students’ League inside the Jagannath University in the old quarters of the city.

As the bloody combat spread into an adjoining shopping district, police intervened with teargas shells and rubber bullets to disperse the two groups locked in the fighting.

About 50 people from each group were hurt in the latest outbreak of violence.

At least 30 people were detained by riot police on charges of destroying public property.

Once rivals, Bangladesh Chattra League (BCL) and Jatiyatabadi Chattra Dal (JCD) activists, joined hands to encounter Jamaat activists.

While BCL is the students’ wing of the opposition Awami League, JCD is the student outfit of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party. On Sunday, clashes between the activists of BCL and Jamaat on the campus left at least 50 injured. The Islami Chhatra Shibir, the militant student front of the Jamaat-e-Islami, has claimed supremacy in more than half a dozen university campuses since the Jamaat became a partner in the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in October 2001.

Meanwhile, activists of various religious parties held rallies in Dhaka yesterday to protest against the Israeli attacks in Lebanon.