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Witnesses said Saran entered the Khulna Chamber building at
around 7:30pm to share views with the chamber on ways to develop bilateral
trade. The bombs went off soon after, they added.
Top pfficials of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and police visited the scene.
OC Azad said efforts were on to track down the assailants and arrest them.
Saran, however, declined comment.
Earlier in the afternoon, Saran distributed assistance among the Sidr-affected
people at the Morelganj Municipality auditorium in Bagerhat district.
He is staying at the City Inn Hotel in Khulna and scheduled to start for Dhaka
on Saturday morning.
In November 1975, Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Samar Sen was seriously
injured in an attack towards the end of his tenure in Dhaka. But Sen refused
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's offer to be evacuated to Kolkata by an Indian
helicopter.
He insisted he had full faith in Bangladeshi doctors, who finally cured him and
Sen went on to serve as India's permanent representative to the UN. He died in
2003 at the age of 89.
In May 21, 2004, the British High Commissioner to Dhaka Anwar Choudhury
survived an unsuccesful grenade attack on him by suspected Islamic radicals.
Palestinian
officials voiced optimism on Sunday the resignation of US-backed Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad would not hinder Washington's planned development initiative for
the West Bank.
Fayyad quit on Saturday after months of tension
with President Mahmoud Abbas, leaving the Palestinian Authority, which
exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in confusion
just as the United States tries to revive peace talks with the Jewish state.
His departure comes less than a week after US Secretary of State John Kerry
visited him and announced that Washington would put together a plan to remove
the "bottlenecks and barriers" to economic development in the West
Bank. The US-educated Fayyad, a former World Bank official, was appointed in
2007 and drew praise from the West for his efforts to develop institutions fit
for a future Palestinian state. But his popularity among average citizens sank
steadily amid 25 percent unemployment and soaring prices.
Palestinian officials said Fayyad, long trusted by the West as a non-corrupt
conduit for its aid funds, would not be handling the US development plan in his
capacity as interim caretaker prime minister.
But, one official said, "everyone knows that aid is meant for the Palestinian
people, and not just one man", and implementation of the initiative would
be monitored by President Mahmoud Abbas and "a team of his choosing".
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said
Fayyad's resignation was a matter of internal politics and should have no
bearing on Western efforts to shore up the Palestinian economy.
"It would be counterproductive and flagrant meddling to punish us for what
was a domestic political decision, and something that was long in the
making," Ashrawi said.
Abbas and his Fatah party had long wrangled with Fayyad, an independent, over
his handling of the moribund economy. The deficit and public debt have deepened
amid World Bank predictions that growth rates of 11 percent in 2010-11 would
fall by half in 2013.
A poll this month put Fayyad's approval rating at just 25 percent, compared
with 49 percent for Abbas and 40 percent for Ismail Haniyeh, the Islamist Hamas
party's prime minister in the Gaza Strip.
Despite Fayyad's reputation for clean dealing in the West, 78 percent of West
Bank residents perceived Palestinian Authority institutions to be corrupt,
according the same survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research.
"Thank God he's finally gone," said Khaled Ashraf, a restaurateur in
Ramallah. "Sure there was some growth, but it's all done now, and just
like usual the people aren't better off."
Some Palestinian officials credited Fayyad with progress, but said he faced long
odds of reviving an economy under Israeli occupation and dwindling aid flows.
The Hamas government in Gaza, which split from Fatah in a bloody 2007 war,
despised Fayyad, whom it regarded as complicit in Israel's blockade on the
coastal enclave and a usurper of Hamas's claim to the