With only four days left for the AL's April 30 deadline for the government's resignation, opposition leaders said the oust-government movement will only gather speed if Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's administration does not step down by the month-end.

Like the first two days of the programme, police prevented AL leaders and workers from gathering at four key spots -- the Zero Point, Shapla Chattar, Dhanmondi Road no. 27 and Tejgaon.

Although some top-line AL leaders were allowed to stage sit-ins at those places, an aggressive police presence kept mid-level leaders and workers at a distance.

However, there was a lull yesterday in the frenzy of arrests of suspected opposition workers who were rounded up in their thousands over the past week or so.

At 10:00am, AL central and city leaders and parliament members streamed in towards the Zero Point penetrating police barriers and positioned themselves on the road-island in front of the General Post Office (GPO).

But police continued to harass them and at one stage an argument broke out between Sylhet Mayor Badruddin Ahmed Kamran and the police guarding the barricades before other AL leaders came to Kamran's aid.

At 11:15am, the leaders said a prayer to salvage the nation "from the government's misrule". The gathering ended after addresses by senior AL leaders including Matia Chowdhury, Suranjit Sen Gupta, Tofail Ahmed, Amir Hossain Amu, Sheikh Selim, Obaidul Kader, Abdul Mannan Khan and Mukul Bose.

The leaders compared the current situation to the days of 1971 and said the government is so stricken by "Awami League panic" that it has turned the nation into a virtual prison.

At around noon, four bombs were thrown from a car as it drove past AL's headquarters on Bangabandhu Avenue. There were no reports of injuries in the explosions.

AL leaders including AL General Secretary Abdul Jalil, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Asaduzzaman Noor and Mohammad Hanif also gathered around a heavily guarded Shapla Chattar in Motijheel where police again barred mid-level party workers from assembling.

"We have had to take recourse to hartals again due to the government's repression on our alternative forms of protest. Our movement will continue until the government resigns," said Abdul Jalil.

At Dhanmondi Road no. 27, several AL MPs braved police to bring out a procession at around 11.30am.

Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) also observed the third and final day of their simultaneous "mass no-confidence" programme by holding a rally amid police harassment in front of their Motijheel office yesterday.

Police prevented JSD leaders from standing on the road-island in front of their office and shoved them towards the footpath where the leaders later held the rally.

Protesting the mass arrests by police to foil the no-confidence programme, JSD President Hasanul Haq Inu said: "Suppression of constitutional and democratic practices will only encourage unconstitutional and undemocratic activities."