• Interim leader says Hadi will remain in heart as long as country exist.
• Amnesty International urges impartial inquiry of Hadi’s killing.
• Hadi’s death triggers widespread protest, unrest across country.
  

Tens of thousands of mourners gathered in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Saturday for the funeral of a student leader, after two days of violent protests over his killing.

Huge crowds accompanied the funeral procession of Sharif Osman Hadi, a key figure in last year’s pro-democracy uprising who died in a hospital in Singapore on Thursday after being shot by masked gunmen while leaving a Dhaka Mosque.

Police wearing body cameras were deployed in front of the parliament building where the funeral prayers were held.

Hadi’s body, which was brought to the capital on Friday, was buried at the central mosque of Dhaka University.

“We have not come here to say goodbye,” interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in an emotional speech.

“You are in our hearts and you will remain in the heart of all Bangladeshis as long as the country exists.”

Hadi, 32, was an outspoken critic of India and was set to contest the general elections in February.

Iqbal Hossain Saikot, a government employee who travelled from afar to attend the prayers, said Hadi was killed because he staunchly opposed India.

He will continue to live “among the millions of Bangladeshi people who love the land and its sovereign territory”, Saikot, 34, told AFP.

Hadi’s death has triggered widespread unrest, with protesters across the South Asian nation demanding the arrest of those responsible.

Late Thursday, people set fire to several buildings in Dhaka including the offices of leading newspapers Prothom Alo and the Daily Star.

Critics accuse the publications of favouring neighbouring India, where Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has taken refuge since fleeing Dhaka in the wake of the 2024 uprising.

Rights group Amnesty International on Saturday urged Bangladesh’s interim government to carry out “prompt, thorough, independent and impartial” investigations into Hadi’s killing and the violence that followed.

It also expressed alarm over the lynching of Hindu garment worker Dipu Chandra Das following allegations of blasphemy.

Yunus said seven suspects had been arrested in connection with Das’s killing in the central district of Mymensingh on Thursday.

• Australian team probes if Sajid, Naveed met extremists in Mindanao.
• Davao hotel staff said men stayed mostly in their room for 28 days.
• CCTVs being reviewed to trace other places they visited or people met.

MANILA: One of the two alleged Bondi Beach shooters visited a gun store during their stay in the Philippines, police said on Saturday as they attempted to retrace the pair’s movements.

An Australian counter-terrorism team is investigating whether Sajid Akram and his son Naveed met with extremists during a nearly month-long visit to the southern island of Mindanao before the mass shooting that killed 15 people in Sydney six days ago.

The staff of Davao City’s GV Hotel told AFP this week that the two men had stayed holed up in their small room for most of their 28-day stay, leaving only briefly each morning.

“What we’ve seen is one of them visiting a gun shop,” Davao regional police spokeswoman Catherine Dela Rey said on Saturday, adding later that it was 50-year-old Sajid Akram who had been seen.

“Our reviewing of CCTVs is ongoing, so we can see the other places they visited and the people they could have spoken with,” she said.

While little has been made public at this stage of the investigation, National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano told reporters on Friday there was “no way” the men could have left the city to conduct training.

“They would go out and come back after two or three hours, the longest was eight hours, but still … that time window (would) not suffice for them to get out of Davao,” he said.

Police inquiries had also revealed that neither of the men had visited any of the city´s seven gun ranges, he said.

President Ferdinand Marcos has criticised media reports that he said misleadingly portrayed the Philippines “as a training hotspot for terrorism”.

“For years, we have acted decisively to dismantle terrorist networks, to secure communities, and to sustain our hard-earned peace,” he said in a speech celebrating the 90th anniversary of the country´s armed forces on Friday.

“To dismiss these gains with unfounded speculation is not acceptable.”

A passenger train smashed into a herd of elephants in India’s northeast, killing seven animals on the spot, officials said Saturday.

No travellers were injured in the accident in Assam state, home to more than 4,000 of the roughly 22,000 wild elephants in India.

Senior Assam police official VV Rakesh Reddy told AFP that seven jumbos were killed, and one elephant sustained an injury.

Five coaches of the train, which was headed to New Delhi from the remote Mizoram state, were derailed.

Authorities have introduced speed restrictions along routes designated elephant corridors, but the latest accident occurred outside of these zones, Kapinjal Kishore Sharma, an Indian Railways spokesman, said.

“The loco pilot, on observing the herd of elephants, applied emergency brakes. However, elephants dashed with the train,” he said.

Deforestation and construction activity near their habitats force elephants to stray further afield for food, often bringing them into conflict with humans.

According to parliamentary figures, 629 people were killed by elephants across India in 2023-2024.