BANGLADESHI Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country today as thousands of protesters stormed her official residence.

Ms Hasina, who has been prime minister since 2009 and held the office previously from 1996-2001, was seen boarding a military helicopter with her sister as weeks of protests came to a climax. She reportedly landed in India.

Head of the army General Waker uz-Zaman addressed the nation, saying he had met opposition politicians and civil society leaders and would seek guidance from the president on forming an interim government.

He also said the military would investigate the deadly crackdown on student protesters of recent weeks, with an estimated 95 people killed on Sunday, 14 of them police officers, as violence reached a crescendo, and that he had ordered troops not to fire on crowds.

“Keep faith in the military, we will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible,” he said.

But crowds continued to ransack the palace, many seen removing furniture and fridge-loads of food. Her family’s ancestral home — her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led the independence struggle against Pakistan and was Bangladesh’s first leader until his assassination in 1975 — was also ransacked, as was her own house in the capital and that of the chief justice.

Two offices of her ruling Awami League party were torched.

Protests against a quota system for government jobs, that reserved a proportion of Civil Service roles for relatives of independence war veterans, swelled week after week after being met with violence and mass arrests, with over 11,000 people detained in the last month.

The government insisted it was seeking to end the quota system, and Ms Hasina was offering as recently as yesterday morning to meet protest leaders, but they insisted her resignation was now their key demand.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh praised the student movement which had continued to mobilise in the face of lethal repression.

“The students have given courage to the people to revolt against the reign of fear by standing up with their blood,” said a party statement. 

The party, together with most of the opposition, had boycotted January’s general election in which Ms Hasina won re-election, advising voters to stay at home rather than take part in a “joke” with a predetermined outcome.