Five people were killed on Friday in a train that caught fire in Bangladesh, said police, whose chief said he suspected an act of sabotage ahead of next Sunday's parliamentary elections boycotted by the opposition.
At least four carriages of the Benapole Express, which connects the western city of Jessore with Dhaka, caught fire, fire official Rakjibul Hasan said.
“We found five bodies,” a police official, Commander Khandaker Al Moin, told reporters.
According to witnesses, the train caught fire in Gopibagh, an old district of Dhaka not far from the capital's main railway station, the terminus of the route.
“We suspect the fire was an act of sabotage,” police chief Anwar Hossain told AFP, without giving further details.
An unnamed rescuer told private broadcaster Somoy TV that hundreds of people rushed to get passengers from the flooded train. “We saved many. But the fire spread quickly,” he said.
According to Somoy TV, Indian passengers were on board the train.
In December, police and the government blamed the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), for an earlier fire on board a train that killed four people.
The BNP had denied any involvement in the fire, saying unjustified allegations were made to give the government a pretext for a campaign of repression against the opposition.
AFP
The BNP and dozens of other opposition parties are boycotting Sunday's general election, calling it a farce.
Thousands of opposition activists were arrested last year after protests called for the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is seeking a fifth term.