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Jamaat and ruling party supporters also clashed in Chittagong, where about 2,500 Islamists attended a service for the executed leader, the port city’s deputy police chief Masudul Hasan told AFP.Security was tight across the country, with checkpoints erected on main roads in Dhaka to deter violence, and thousands of police patrolling the capital.Jamaat’s previous such strike calls protesting the trial of their senior leaders for war crimes largely went unheeded.Bangladeshi activists celebrate outside Dhaka’s central jail after the execution of Jamaat-e-Islami party’s chief Motiur Rahman Nizami in Dhaka.

The police said they fired rubber bullets after hundreds of Nizami’s supporters attacked them with stones in the northweste city of Rajshahi, where a liberal professor was killed by suspected Islamists last month.Clashes erupted in Bangladesh Wednesday after the execution, heightening tension in a country reeling from a string of killings of secular and liberal activists.In a statement, Jamaat, which was opposed to Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, described 73-year-old Nizami’s execution as a "planned murder" and called a nationwide 24-hour strike from 5 am Thursday to 5 am on Friday. Nizami was executed at Dhaka Central jail just after midnight after the SC rejected his final plea.Bangladesh hanged Nizami on Wednesday for genocide and other crimes committed during a 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, drawing an angry reaction but no immediate violence from his supporters.The party last called a nationwide hartal on May 6, a day after the Supreme Court rejected Nizami’s review petition reconfirming his death penalty.Security was also stepped up in Nizami’s ancestral district of Pabna, where his body was taken under armed escort for burial in his family’s grave.

"There were 500 Jamaat activists who were protesting the execution."He (Nizami) was deprived of justice.Bangladesh’s biggest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami Wednesday called a nationwide general strike Thursday to protest against the execution of its chief Nizami, the senior-most Islamist to be executed for war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan. Nizami, a 73-year-old former govement minister, was the fifth and the most senior Opposition figure executed since the secular govement set up a controversial war crimes tribunal in 2010. (Photo: AP)Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan. We fired rubber bullets as they became violent," Rajshahi police inspector Selim Badsah said, adding that about 20 were arrested.Nizami was hanged at midnight, a day after the Supreme Court verdict reached authorities at the Dhaka Central Jail.."At least 16 activists of Jamaat were arrested (in Pabna) Tuesday night as part of the security clampdown," local police inspector Ahsanul Haq said. He is a victim of political vengeance," acting Jamaat chief Mokbul Ahmed rubber V ring Factory said in the statement urging people to observe the strike.