Tension mounted in the southern Bangladesh port city of Chittagong Wednesday after bloody clashes between rival groups left five people dead and scores injured, officials and witnesses said.

The newly floated Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) claimed three of the five dead were their grassroots activists who had severed links with the former ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

The overnight violence in Chittagong, 260 km south of here, also left 54 more injured with many in critical condition after being targeted by riot police using teargas and rubber bullets.

Activists of the BNP and LDP, who are made up of mostly BNP rebels, fought one another here and the northern Bogra city where an opposition activist was clubbed to death.

A BNP activist was reportedly killed in the eastern Bangladesh district of Luxmipur during a rally Tuesday. Local police identified the dead man as a youth member of the BNP.

Zia's BNP has forged an alliance with the fundamentalist party, Jamaat E Islami, for facing the challenge from secular opposition chief Sheikh Hasina whose Awami League leads a 14-party alliance.

The Awami League and BNP are the main contenders for power in a general election due next January.

- By DPA