At least five people died late on Friday after a passenger train caught fire in Bangladesh, AFP reported. The police suspect the incident to be an arson attack.

This comes amid political unrest in Bangladesh ahead of the general election on Sunday. The country’s main Opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has boycotted the polls.

At least four coaches of the Benapole Express caught fire, AFP quoted fire service officer Rakjibul Hasan as saying.

The train was arriving in Dhaka from the western town of Jessore. Bangladeshi railway officials told PTI that most of the train’s nearly 290 passengers were returning home from India.

Anwar Hossain, the police chief, told AFP that the fire incident was an act of sabotage. He did not provide more details.

AK Abdul Momen, the country’s foreign minister, called the incident a “horrifying act of arson”. The train was “intentionally set ablaze by miscreants”, Momen alleged.

The police added that unidentified arsonists had also set fire to at least five primary schools, including four polling booths in Gazipur, which is on the outskirts of the capital, Reuters reported.

“We have intensified patrolling and remain on high alert to thwart any untoward incident,” Reuters quoted Gazipur police chief Kazi Shafiqul Alam as saying.

The police said that similar incidents had been reported across the country over the past two days.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has alleged that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was trying to legitimise a sham election. Hasina has rejected the Opposition’s demands of allowing a neutral election-time government to conduct the polls.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, has demanded an investigation supervised by the United Nations into Friday’s fire incident, alleging that it was a pre-planned act of sabotage ahead of the polls.

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