Bangladesh's 14-party political alliance has renewed its threat to launch a third transport blockade across the country next week after election officials ignored its demands for a delay in planned parliamentary elections.
Apprehensive of election fraud, the alliance led by the Awami League wants the January 21 elections to be put off.
"We will go ahead with the planned blockade from next Sunday unless all our demands to ensure a free and impartial election are accepted by Saturday," alliance co-ordinator Abdul Jalil said on Wednesday.
Similar blockades and protests in the past month led to violence.
Bias alleged
The action by the alliance led by Sheikh Hasina, head of the Awami League, is to press for the removal of election officials it accuses of bias towards Begum Khaleda Zia - who ended her five-year term as prime minister in late October - and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP].
Thousands of alliance activists on Wednesday surrounded Bangladesh's main administrative secretariat in Dhaka, choking streets and preventing officials from going in or out.
"It's a total gherao [siege] of the secretariat," one witness said, adding that authorities deployed hundreds of riot police to try to prevent trouble.
Animosity between Khaleda and Hasina runs high and the two women have not spoken to each other for about a decade.