Aug. 08, 2024 00:00 AM EST

Ap Photos: Bangladesh's Turbulent Half-Century, From Coups To Climate Shocks

FILE - Bangladeshi guerrillas beat a victim as they torture and execute four men suspected of collaborating with Pakistani militiamen accused of murder, rape and looting during months of civil war in Dacca, Bangladesh, Dec. 18, 1971. (AP Photo/Horst Faas, Michel Laurent, File) Horst Faas, ASSOCIATED PRESS
FILE - Bangladeshi guerrillas beat a victim as they torture and execute four men suspected of collaborating with Pakistani militiamen accused of murder, rape and looting during months of civil war in Dacca, Bangladesh, Dec. 18, 1971. (AP Photo/Horst Faas, Michel Laurent, File)
FILE - Bengali nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman walks towards a battery of microphones to address an estimated one million people at a rally in Dacca's Race Course Ground in Dacca, Jan. 11, 1972. (AP Photo/Michel Laurent, File)
FILE- Police officers fire their rifles near anti-government protesters on the third day of an anti-government campaign to unseat Prime Minister Khaleda Zia for new general election, at a railway station in Tongi, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Monday, Feb. 26, 1996. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File)
FILE - In this April 2, 1971, file photo, armed East Pakistan fighters head for the battle front by pedicab, in Jessore, East Pakistan. (AP Photo, File)
FILE- Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, left, and Pakistan's Premier Zulfikar Bhutto meet in Dhaka, Bangladesh on June 30, 1974. (AP Photo/Kamrul Huda, File)
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DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh has had a turbulent existence since gaining independence in 1971 following a war with Pakistan.

Its first coup occurred in 1975, when President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated. Two more coups that year ended with Ziaur Rahman seizing power. In 1981, Rahman was assassinated by rebels who stormed a government guest house. In 1982, successor Abdus Sattar was overthrown in a coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who later assumed the presidency.

Power was then traded between two formidable women, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. Hasina was toppled this week by a student-led uprising. Her archrival Zia was freed this week from house arrest.

The South Asia nation is densely populated with 170 million people and has been scarred by climate and humanitarian crises. Bangladesh lies north of the Bay of Bengal and is a delta nation lined with rivers. The location, topography and tropical climate mean frequent flooding from cyclones and monsoon rains. A famine in 1974 was one of the worst in the 20th century, with hundreds of thousands of people dying.

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