DHAKA Bangladesh police arrested a leader of a Muslim group on Sunday for questioning about unrest in Dhaka, triggering fresh protests in the capital by his supporters in which witnesses said nearly 100 people were hurt.

Police said they had arrested Moulana Mufti Amini, secretary general of the group Islami Oikyo Jote, for questioning over disturbances in the capital on Saturday in which Islamists killed a policeman.

Witnesses said Sunday's injuries occurred after police, using batons and tear gas, moved in to disperse Amini supporters chanting demands for his release.

"It's a hell of a situation," said a reporter on the scene.

Jote leaders alleged over 200 people were injured in Sunday's police action and announced plans for protest demonstrations across the country on Monday.

Mohammad Salahuddin, assistant police commissioner, said police arrested 25 protesters on Sunday. "We are ready to handle them (Islamic activists) appropriately," he told Reuters.

Police said Amini was held under the public safety act, which allows police to detain anyone for months before laying charges formally. "Amini will be interrogated as part of an investigation into Saturday's incidents," a police officer said.

The Jote enforced a daylong strike in Dhaka on Saturday to press for the repeal of a court ban on Islamic edicts involving women's rights and to try to foil a rally by nongovernmental organizations which support the court's ruling.

Islamists killed one policeman in the capital's Mohammadpur area during Saturday's strike and assaulted at least 15 other security personnel, police and witnesses said.

Police said they had arrested nearly 60 militants, mostly students of a madrasa (Islamic religious school), in Mohammadpur, in the wake of Saturday's violence.

The Bangladesh high court decided in December to ban fatwas, or edicts by Islamic clerics, that could subject women to torture for alleged adultery and prevent them from mixing and working with men outside their families.

It labeled the mainly foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations as "Agents of Satan" and called for the banning of their activities in overwhelmingly Muslim Bangladesh.

The government has said the public safety act, approved by Parliament last year, was intended to curb what it called terrorism and crimes.

But opposition parties have alleged that the law was used mainly to hound political rivals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and they demanded it be scrapped immediately.

The Jote belongs to a four-party opposition alliance headed by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, chief of Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

(Reuter)