DHAKA, 29 February 2004 — Unidentified assailants stabbed leading Bangladeshi author Humayun Azad as he left a national book fair on the Dhaka University campus late Friday night. His family blamed the attack on hard-line Islamists.

“He is still unconscious and doctors are monitoring his health at the intensive cure unit,” his publisher Osmani Gani.

“We have to wait 72 hours for the doctors to be sure as one injury was on the back of his head,” Gani said from the Combined Military Hospital.

Azad, 56, a Bengali-language teacher at Dhaka University, was stabbed three times late Friday by unidentified assailants as he left a book fair on the campus, police said.

The assailants fled by detonating a homemade bomb that sent people running for cover.

Police said yesterday that two suspects had been arrested.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s main opposition leader Hasina Wajed walked several kilometers to the hospital in protest after her flag-carrying jeep was barred from entering the barracks, reporters accompanying her said.

They said Hasina’s jeep was stopped at the gate of restricted Dhaka Cantonment barracks and in protest she walked at least four kilometers to the hospital to enquire about Azad’s condition. But she was not allowed entry into the hospital, reporters said.

Teachers, students and fans of Azad demonstrated yesterday on the Dhaka University campus against the attack.

“He (Azad) is a symbol against communalism and we strongly condemn the attack,” Arefin Siddiqui, president of Dhaka University Teachers Association, told the protest rally on the campus.

Kamal Hossain, a lawyer and leader of the small Gono Forum party, added: “This attack is an attack on free speech.”

Flowers were placed by his fans and friends at the blood-stained scene of the attack.

Azad’s family and fellow writers blamed hard-line Islamists for the attack, saying it was linked to his latest book, entitled “Pak Sar Zamin Saad Baad” — the first lines of the Pakistani national anthem.

The fictional book is based on pro-Pakistani groups in Bangladesh who collaborated with the Pakistani Army during the 1971 independence war.

His wife Latifa Kohinoor claimed that Azad had received threats from fundamentalist groups that had openly demonstrated against his book in the streets of Dhaka.

Azad, who has won national awards, has at least 50 publications to his credit.