DHAKA, Dec 12, (Agencies): At least three people were killed and more than 250 others were injured when police fired tear-gas and rubber bullets to disperse wage protests by textile workers in Bangladesh on Sunday, police and doctors said.
Police said three male workers were killed and some 150 were injured in the main port city of Chittagong, some 300 kms (190 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka.
Around 50 others were injured in violence in Dhaka and another 50 were hurt in nearby Narayanganj town.
Police earlier said around 4,000 workers attacked police and vandalized at least 20 vehicles, including setting fire to one, in Chittagong.
Witnesses said garments workers clashed with police and smashed vehicles at Kuril in Dhaka. It took police several hours to bring the situation under control.
“We can so far confirm the death of one male worker,” police officer Reza Al Masud told reporters in Chittagong.

Doctors at the emergency department of the Chittagong Medical College Hospital later said a total of three male bodies had been carried to the morgue from the scene.
The violence forced some 300 industrial units, mostly garment factories, to close down in the Chittagong Export Procession Zone (CEPZ).
There are several garment factories owned by South Korean, Japanese and Chinese companies in the CEPZ, officials of the Bangladesh commerce ministry said.
Factory officials and police said they would be reopened as soon as possible.
The government raised minimum monthly salaries for garment workers couple of months ago, but the protesters said they were not being paid accordingly.
The new minimum wage was raised to 3,000 takas ($43), from 1,662 takas ($24) earlier, payable from Dec 1.

Bangladesh’s 4,500 garment factories, many of which produce clothes for retailers such as Wal-Mart, H&M and Levi Strauss, must now pay workers at least 3,000 takas ($43) a month — up 80 percent on the 2006 minimum wage.
But unions have said that many manufacturers have not raised salaries, despite government warnings, and that some experienced workers had been demoted to deny them higher wages.
Labour minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain told AFP that the violence had to stop, but that employers should act to address the grievances of many senior workers.
“I urge the workers, don’t be impatient and don’t be violent,” he said. “But a worker who has 20 years of experience cannot be given the same salary as a new person.”
In Dhaka, 4,000 mainly female workers torched two vehicles and blocked a main road in protest against factory owners.
At Rupganj, 30 kms (20 miles) northeast of the capital, 5,000 workers attacked a German joint-venture garment factory.
District police chief Biswas Afzal Hossain said police used tear-gas and rubber bullets to break up the protesters.
Youngone — the country’s largest exporter — shut its factories after riots in Chittagong on Saturday, when dozens of people were injured, including two Youngone managers, as workers vandalised factories and vehicles.
Company director Shikdar Mesbahuddin Ahmed told AFP its wages are already higher than the new government minimum but it was “devising ways to compensate senior workers who felt deprived by the new rates”.
“They became unruly and didn’t wait for our decision. Our deputy director is seriously injured. He will be flown to Bangkok for treatment,” Ahmed said, adding Youngone employed 36,000 workers in Bangladesh.
Garments accounted for 80 percent of the country’s $16.2 billion of annual exports last year. Bangladesh’s factories employ more than three million workers, about 85 percent of them women.