ANGRY protesters stormed the offices of Bangladesh’s two leading newspapers late on Thursday after the death of a prominent activist in last year’s political uprising in Bangladesh.

The crowds set fire to the buildings of the dailies, trapping journalists and other staff inside.

Hours later, the journalists and other staff were evacuated, and the fires were brought under control early today.

It was not clear why the protesters attacked the newspapers whose editors are known to be closely connected with the country’s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Protests were organised in recent months outside the offices of the dailies by Islamists who blamed the newspapers for their alleged link with India.

Sharif Osman Hadi, a spokesman for the Inqilab Moncho culture group, died in hospital in Singapore early on Thursday evening after a week-long battle for his life.

He was shot on the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, last Friday while riding on a rickshaw. Two men on a motorbike followed Mr Hadi and one shot him before fleeing  the scene.

Mr Hadi was a critic of both neighbouring India and former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, whose 15-year rule of Bangladesh ended in last year’s uprising.

Witnesses and media reports said hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Dhaka immediately after the news of Mr Hadi’s death, rallying on Shahbagh Square near the Dhaka University campus.

Later, a group of protesters gathered outside the office of the country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar area. They then surged into the building, vandalised it and set fire to it.

A few hundred yards away, another group of protesters pushed into the premises of the country’s leading English-language Daily Star and set fire to the building, according to footage from Kaler Kantha, another mainstream newspaper.

Soldiers and paramilitary border guards deployed outside the two buildings but did not take any action against the protesters.