Bangladesh Daily Star: Inside the night a mob burned a newspaper

"I can’t breathe any more. There’s too much smoke. I’m inside. You are killing me."

Zyma Islam typed those desperate words on Facebook well past midnight on December 18th. She wasn’t reporting from a distant battlefield, but from the rooftop of her own newsroom in Dhaka, one of 28 journalists and staff trapped by a mob that had set their building ablaze. Islam, an investigative reporter for The Daily Star, Bangladesh’s largest English-language newspaper, was filing a lead story on the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent figure in the youth movement that had recently ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Hadi had been shot the previous week outside a Dhaka mosque and later died in a Singapore hospital.

As Islam was still writing, the first warning reached the newsroom: a crowd was marching on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, the capital’s media hub. Simultaneously, another mob was converging on the offices of its sister publication, Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s leading Bengali-language daily. Protesters accused both newspapers of "setting the ground" for Hadi’s assassination—an allegation unsubstantiated but potent in an already volatile political climate.

Threats had been escalating since Hadi’s murder. Social media buzzed with posts branding the newspapers "Indian agents," accusing them of downplaying the assassination, a narrative amplified by the leader’s own anti-India rhetoric. Protests had already been staged outside their offices.

At The Daily Star, Islam and her colleagues were working furiously to finalize the day’s edition. "We don’t stop the press. Not for nothing," Islam stated. "If we stopped every time there was a threat, we wouldn’t go to print on many days." At precisely 12:05 AM, she hit "submit" on her story and headed downstairs to turn off her computer, the last to do so. Then came the chilling sound of bricks smashing glass, a furious, relentless assault indicating a large mob outside.

Some staff had managed to escape the building, but others, hearing the escalating din from below, retreated. Twenty-eight journalists and staff, including two women, remained inside. While some suggested barricading themselves in the newsroom, Islam argued for seeking a place with open air and easy access to emergency services. "We knew they would burn the building," Islam recounted softly. "So we went up to the roof before the fire even started."

They made their way to the stairwell, ascending nine floors in the darkness. At 12:24 AM, Islam was still on the phone with the police as she climbed. By 12:50 AM, the smoke had become all-encompassing. "If I held my hand in front of my face, I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t grey. It was black." On the rooftop, a small garden area with large potted palms, they secured the iron door and dragged heavy planters across it. "Fire doors are never locked," she explained clinically, "But in this case, the mob were going to use the fire exit to reach us."

From the rooftop, the trapped journalists could see the mob gathering below. Instinctively, they kept away from the edges, avoiding the motion-activated lights along the banisters that could betray their presence. Fifteen minutes later, the building was engulfed in flames. "I can’t say exactly when they set it alight. What I know is this: by around 12:50, the smoke was so thick I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face," Islam recalled. The fire, originating below, was funneling up the elevator shaft.

Many soaked their shirts and handkerchiefs in water, pressing them to their mouths, and lay flat on the ground to find cleaner air. They called out to each other in the darkness, desperately seeking "pockets of air" in the thickening smoke. Downstairs, colleagues who had managed to blend into the mob relayed frantic messages: some attackers were armed with firearms and crude bombs, and were "planning an assassination."

On the roof, some individuals broke down, calling parents, offering farewells, and seeking forgiveness. Islam, however, remained composed. One man, contemplating a leap to the adjacent building two floors below, had to be restrained. "One colleague collapsed in front of me," she said. "That’s when I got scared. I thought – we might see the first fatality." It was at this moment of profound fear that she posted her desperate Facebook message.

At some point, Islam called her parents, a sailor father and a teacher mother, who were attending a family function outside Dhaka. There were no goodbyes, no grand farewells. "I’m not that kind of person," she stated. Her message was brief: "I’m here. I’m stuck. We’ll figure something out."

"Doing journalism in Bangladesh has never been about being safe," Islam reflected. "We are used to death threats. When we get them, we just take precautions." The army rescue arrived at 4:30 AM. They formed a cordon, holding back the crowd for a few crucial minutes. The trapped staff descended the fire escape and then scaled a wall at the rear of the building. They navigated nine stories of smoke-choked stairs, using wet shirts and jackets as makeshift masks. Firefighters had smashed windows along their descent, offering minimal relief. At the bottom, a ladder was propped against the rear wall, and on the other side, a broken rickshaw van was positioned to cushion their fall. "We climbed up and jumped onto the rickshaw," Islam recounted.

Some sustained injuries; not everyone was young or agile, but there was no other option. They had been trapped on that roof for four harrowing hours. "The four hours felt like half an hour – everything was moving so fast. By the time I got out, my phone had long died. I couldn’t believe it was nearly dawn. Up on that roof, it had felt like one endless midnight," Islam remembered. In a eerily quiet side alley, they lay low as the mob continued to ransack the newsroom. Amidst the noise and looting, they slipped away, ferried by army vehicles to a nearby camp.

Islam returned home, called her parents, and slept briefly before checking into a hospital emergency room for nebulizer treatment. "I took a day off. I had a bit of carbon monoxide poisoning," she said, almost lightly. The Daily Star did not print that morning, a first in its 34-year history. However, the disruption lasted only 15 hours. The office was gutted and unusable, forcing staff to work remotely. Within two weeks, two editorial floors were repaired, and they were back at their desks.

Nearly three months later, the building still bore the scars of the attack. Insurers sifted through debris, piles of glass were heaped by the entrance, and the auditorium remained a burnt-out shell. Foreign diplomats continued to visit, surveying the devastation—a stark reminder that the assault had reverberated far beyond the newsroom.

Below the roof where staff had cowered, the mob had unleashed what the paper later described as "nightlong mayhem." Furniture was smashed, archives torched, and a photo exhibition was torn down and burned. The ground-floor auditorium was gutted, and the cafeteria looted. Stationery stores went up in flames; the conference hall, library, and 100-seat auditorium were vandalized; and the video studio was charred. The photo department, housing 35 years of archives, was stripped bare, with cameras and hard drives stolen. Administrative offices were looted. The attackers reached as high as the seventh floor, smashing glass. Only the thick smoke, perhaps, spared the server room.

Yet, by the following day, reporters were working from home; broken glass was replaced; laptops were sourced; and the sixth-floor newsroom was patched up. The December 20th morning paper carried a single-word headline: "Unbowed." Much of the eight-page edition was written and edited by journalists who had spent the night on a rooftop. "Those people who were trapped there and were afraid for their lives started working after just 15 hours," said Kamal Ahmed, the managing editor. "This resilience – we are not going to give up."

The Daily Star estimates its losses at approximately $2 million, a significant toll for a single night of violence. However, nearly three months on, the only arrests are the 37 made in the immediate aftermath—11 in connection with The Daily Star and 26 for Prothom Alo. Police claim to have identified a man who incited the violence on social media but have yet to apprehend him. The planners and orchestrators of the attacks, and their motives, remain unclear.

When asked if the night of the attack was the most significant night of her life, Islam shook her head. "Bangladesh isn’t a conflict zone. But it doesn’t give the same rights and protections to its journalists the way democracies are supposed to," she stated. "We got through one night. We can get through another." Then came a line that sounded less like defiance and more like ingrained habit: "We are not going to give up."