Bangladesh deployed some 6,000 elite soldiers who fanned out across the country on Wednesday as intelligence reports warned that the main contenders in a Dec. 29 election may be targeted by Islamic militants. Former prime ministers Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, whose parties are frontrunners in the December poll, have said their lives are at risk. Security fears increased after officials seized live grenades and a bomb with a timing device near a spot where Khaleda had addressed one of her several campaign rallies on Tuesday. Outlawed groups including the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, blamed for countrywide bomb attacks in 2005, have threatened the politicians with strikes ahead of the election, police said. The hard-liners want to turn Muslim-majority secular Bangladesh into a Shariah-based Islamic state. “The RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) personnel will act as a strike force, along with army troops, during and before the election, helping the civil administration and election commission conduct the vote peacefully,” a senior government official said on Wednesday. Many political analysts suspect Bangladesh could see a spate of violence in the run-up to the polls and after the elections, when the losing party is expected to reject the results and call for protests – something that has been a tradition in Bangladesh politics.
