Bangladesh Government

Special envoys are being sent abroad to seek emergency aid for the victims of floods that have affected more than 17 million residents of Bangladesh, government officials said Sunday. President Hussain Mohammed Ershad made the decision Saturday, but there was no word on how many countries would be visited. Only two countries have so far pledged emergency support: Japan with 100,000 tons of grain and the United States with $25,000. "This is simply peanuts," one official said.

Two days before a national election, Bangladesh's government deployed more than 50,000 soldiers and police nationwide to control escalating political violence. Police said seven more people were killed. The fatalities came as Bangladeshi troops took up positions outside 30,000 polling stations throughout the country ahead of Monday's vote. Authorities say clashes between supporters of rival parties have left 134 people dead since campaigning started in July.

Nearly 10,000 Bangladeshis who lost their jobs in Kuwait and Iraq because of the Gulf War staged a "bare-chest" demonstration in Dhaka on Thursday to demand their immediate re-employment abroad, witnesses said. The protesters said fewer than a quarter of the 62,000 Bangladeshis affected had found new jobs in Kuwait, and none had found work in Iraq. They blamed their plight on the Bangladesh government's indifference.

Bangladesh's government said it had lifted a ban on the return of former Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed from overseas, and denied that it was pressuring another former leader, Khaleda Zia, to go into exile. The military-backed interim government issued an order April 18 that barred Wajed from returning. She was blocked Sunday from boarding a flight in London en route home from the United States. The government did not give a reason for lifting the ban.

NEW DELHI, India - The Bangladesh army announced Monday it would end its search for bodies in the rubble of a garment factory complex that collapsed nearly three weeks ago in a suburb of the capital, Dhaka. Saying they believe they have found all the corpses, authorities placed the final death toll at or close to 1,127, making it the worst disaster in the history of the global apparel industry. The eight-story Rana Plaza collapsed April 24th just before 9 a.m., leading to weeks of frantic rescue efforts as anguished relatives watched and waited under the hot sun. The disaster has focused global attention on the desperate conditions for workers in Bangladesh making clothes for bargain-hungry Western consumers.

At least eight people were killed and 50 injured when a bomb exploded at an election rally in Mollarhat, witnesses and police said. The witnesses said a bomb went off while Sheik Helaluddin, a candidate for the Oct. 1 parliamentary poll, was about to address a meeting. Helaluddin was not hurt. Helaluddin is a member of the Awami League party of former Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed, who stepped down in July.

Another bout of storms killed more than 70 people and injured 1,000 in Bangladesh during the weekend, officials and news reports said Monday. Tornadoes, squalls, rain and floods have plagued the country since April 30, when a cyclone and tidal wave killed at least 139,000 people. More than 215 people have died in storms and floods this month. A 7,000-member U.S.

As an American and an appointed representative for the people of the valiant country of Bangladesh, I am embarrassed that The Times would so ridicule the efforts to help and strengthen a people so in need of economic stability by the commentary "Beneath the Flag of a Ravished People, True Glitz" (by Linda Blandford, March 27).

NEW DELHI, India -- The death toll in Bangladesh rose to more than 300 people Friday following the collapse this week of a building that housed five apparel factories, officials said, as protests by workers at other garment plants intensified. Bangladesh police fired tear gas and rubber bullets as hundreds of stick-wielding workers in the Dhaka area stopped highway traffic, smashed vehicles and vandalized garment factories that refused to close during a declared day of mourning.

Thousands of Burmese Muslims are fleeing to Bangladesh each month, swelling one of the world's largest refugee concentrations in one of the world's poorest countries. But neither the refugees--from Arakan, the only Muslim majority province in Myanmar, formerly Burma--nor their hard-pressed hosts have yet managed to alert the world to their plight. "We thought the issue would come to light someday," said one official in the small town of Ramu in southeast Bangladesh.