A deadly mutiny over pay that began with border guards in the Bangladesh capital spread across the country Thursday, with shootings reported at several guard posts, police and witnesses said, AP reported. The renewed shooting came hours after officials announced that a 20-hour mutiny of guards in the capital had ended. In a televised speech to the nation, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appealed to the mutineers to surrender. «We don't want to use force to break the standoff,» Hasina said. «But don't play with our patience. We will not hesitate to do whatever is needed to end the violence if peaceful means fails.» Mutineers fired shots at the commanding officer's residence at a border guard post in the southern town of Tekhnaf early Thursday, sending him fleeing, said police official Jalal Ahmed Chowdhury. Witnesses said violence also erupted at border guard posts in Cox's Bazar, Chittagong and Naikhongchari in the south, Sylhet in the northeast, Rajshahi and Naogaon in the northwest. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the new round of violence. Border guards first mutinied Wednesday at the group's headquarters in Dhaka, turning their weapons on senior officers, seizing a nearby shopping center and trapping students in a school on their compound. The guards later agreed to surrender after the government said it would grant them amnesty and discuss their grievances. At least 10 people have been confirmed dead in Dhaka, but officials fear up to 50 people may have been killed there. On Thursday morning, the bodies of seven border guards _ two of them of officers _ were found outside the violence-wracked headquarters of Bangladesh Rifles, doctors at a local hospital said. Government officials were still meeting Thursday with mutineers in Dhaka and expected the surrender there to be completed in the mid-afternoon, government negotiator Fazle Noor Tapash said. About 4,000 guards were believed in the compound, and it was not immediately clear how many had surrendered.
