Leader of the Opposition and AL President Sheikh Hasina announced the shutdown at a press conference on July 2 after the six-hour blockade of road, rail and waterways.

Ambulances, newspaper vehicles, drug stores, garbage trucks, and other vehicles on emergency duty will remain outside the purview of the 6:00am-6: 00pm shutdown.

The government has taken a number of measures to maintain law and order during the hartal hours. Some 7,000 policemen, BDR and Ansar personnel will be deployed across the capital to avert untoward incidents.

Meanwhile, several hundred opposition men yesterday paraded the city streets to grieve the death of Golam Mustafa Milon.

The mourning procession, which was brought after a gayebana janaza for Milon on Bangabandhu Avenue before Johar prayers, ended at the central Shaheed Minar.

Amid tight security, hundreds of opposition activists joined the procession. They were wearing black badges and waving black flags.

In a brief speech before the procession, AL Presidium Member Amir Hossain Amu said, "The ruling alliance has started killing the opposition men to thwart the 'oust-government movement'. And we just can't afford to sit idle in this situation."

Reminding the BNP and its allies of the 'anti-government movement and the outcome in 1996', Amu demanded that the alliance government implement the electoral reforms proposed by the opposition combine.

Abdur Razzak, Tofail Ahmed, Motia Chowdhury, Rashed Khan Menon, Obaidul Quader, Mofazzel Hossain Chowdhury Maya, Dilip Barua, Mostafa Jalal Mohiuddin, Nurul Islam and Mukul Bose, among others, took part in the procession.

Milon’s body taken from morgue
Meanwhile, AL and its front organisations have alleged that their leaders and workers could not participate in Milon's janaza as the police took away the body from Dhaka Medical College Morgue in the early hours yesterday and sent it to the slain opposition activist's village home at Mathbaria in Barisal for burial.

"The police hijacked Milon's body late at night as the government is trying to evade responsibilities for the killing. They did not even inform his [Milon's] wife and children about it," Pankaj Debnath, general secretary of Awami Swechhasebak League, said yesterday.

After the gayebana janaza in front of AL's central office, a group of AL leaders accompanied Milon's wife and children to Mathbaria.

In Sherpur, the district unit AL will not observe today's hartal as a mark of respect for Mohammad Abu Bakar, a freedom fighter and member of the district AL advisory committee, who died of cardiac arrest yesterday, said a press release.

Another press release from Chittagong City Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury said the US Navy hospital ship Mercy providing free medical service ashore and on the ship in the port city will be outside the range of hartal.