Following hundreds of fatal anti-government protests, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the nation.
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According to reports, she and her sister were flown to safety by an army chopper. Though her exact location is unknown, Hasina is believed to be traveling to India.
Despite a curfew and an internet crackdown, sizable numbers of applauding demonstrators besieged her official residence in the capital city of Dhaka.
Over 300 people have died in recent weeks as a result of skirmishes between police and protestors, which claimed at least 90 lives on Sunday.
Since the nation’s founding in 1971, the South Asian nation has witnessed some of the worst atrocities.
Calls to remove civil service job quotas were the initial focus of the student protest in July, but as time went on, demands for Hasina’s resignation after more than 20 years in office grew.
Students demanded an end to the quota system which set aside a third of coveted government jobs for specific sections of society – including the relatives of veterans from Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
In response, the Bangladesh Supreme Court reduced the number of reserved jobs to just five per cent, prompting the protests which then spiraled into demands for Hasina to quit after over two decades in power.
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