The "peace and development rally" organised by Jubo League's Dhaka south unit started around 2:30pm in the capital's Bangabandhu Avenue.

Leaders and activists of the ruling Awami League and its various associate bodies have taken a position in different parts of the capital while the BNP is holding a mass sit-in programme at its Nayapaltan headquarters and across the country.

Awami League says it will hold a rally at Dhaka’s Bangabandhu Avenue marking the second anniversary of the January 5 elections if police deny the party permission for Suhrawardy Udyan.

That humid August afternoon changed Bangladesh politics, perhaps forever. An Awami League rally was in progress at the Bangabandhu Avenue and it was around 5.15pm at the fag end of the rally when Sheikh Hasina, then the opposition leader, started her speech from the top of an open truck.

300 leaders and activists of Awami League barely escape with their lives in the grenade attack which kill 24 people in a party rally at Bangabandhu Avenue rally in Dhaka on August 21, 2004.

"All hell broke loose there, they made it look like doomsday," recalls Motaher Hossain, general secretary of the Krishak League, who was standing barely a yard from the dais raised on a truck when indiscriminate bombs and gunshots rocked the area.