n Bangladesh, the main opposition party the Bangladesh Nationalist Party led 18 party alliance has called for countrywide dawn to dusk strike for two consecutive days on Sunday and Monday over the issue of missing party leader M Ilias Ali. 

BNP's acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir announced the new protest programme today at a press briefing at the party's headquarters in Dhaka. The decision to enforce the two day strike was announced on the expiry of the Saturday evening deadline set by BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia for the government to find the party's missing leader.

Participating in a programme in Dhaka city today, Bangladesh Home Minister Sahara Khatun said that investigations in the case of missing leader Ilias Ali are continuing and said that law enforcers would take all possible steps to prevent any destructive activities during the BNP called strike.

Ilias Ali who is a Former MP and one of the BNP's organizing Secretaries and Sylhet district unit chief of the party has been missing along with his car driver from the night of April 17th this year.

Bangladesh Nationalist party has called for another two day dawn to dusk shutdown from Sunday demanding that the government find the whereabouts of missing party leader Ilias Ali, barely four days after the party had enforced a three consecutive day strike.

More than 20 vehicles were vandalised and set on fire in Dhaka city while a driver of a bus was burnt alive in the pre-hartal violence during last week's protests. In addition to this three persons were killed and several injured in violent clashes between BNP activists and law enforcers in Bishwanath of Ilias Ali's home district Sylhet during the strike.

Ilias Ali has been missing since the night of April 17th this year after he left his residence at Banani in Dhaka while his car and mobile phone was found abandoned on the road in the city. Security agencies have been engaged in serious efforts to trace the missing leader with raids being conducted in different places around Dhaka city, but so far they have not succeeded in tracing the missing leader.