DHAKA, 14 August 2006 — People living in villages near Bangladesh’s border with India were fleeing due to intermittent exchange of fire between the forces of the two countries, sources said yesterday.
More than 20,000 residents were evacuated from border villages and thousands of others living along the border fled yesterday as border guards of the two countries traded mortar fire, sources said.
At least two Bangladeshi farmers were killed in the latest clashes yesterday in the northern Dinajpur region as the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) enforced a curfew in the no man’s land between the porous frontiers of the two countries.
The undeclared border war between the BSF and the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) was triggered last week by a dispute over the ownership of about 60 hectares of a rice field in Bangladesh’s northeastern Sylhet region bordering India’s Assam state.
“The BSF opened fire with heavy guns without any provocation from our side,” said Col. Tasneem Ahmad, a BDR commander in Sylhet region.
But diplomats in the Indian Embassy in Dhaka blamed the gun battle on BDR, which had reportedly killed two civilians on the Indian side.
An official from the Bangladeshi Ministry of Home Affairs said that there were many such small parcels of disputed land along the over 4,000-km land boundary between the two countries.
Recently, both countries decided to step up security along the border to check trafficking of women and children and smuggling of drugs and arms.
Meanwhile, regional commanders of border troops from the two countries met at an Indian border checkpoint yesterday to ease the tense situation and restore peace on both sides of the frontier.
60 Fishermen Missing
A storm in the Bay of Bengal sank seven fishing boats and at least 60 Bangladeshi fishermen were missing, police said yesterday.
The storm on Saturday also triggered a meter high water surge, washing away some houses and shops on the island of Saint Martin, about 500 km southeast of the capital Dhaka.
