Drone video shows vast scale of Bangladesh protest as PM Sheikh Hasina flees

Drone video showed the vast scale of protests in the Bangladeshi capital on Monday (August 5), as the country's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country after hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on demonstrations that began as protests against job quotas and swelled into a movement demanding her downfall.

Bangladesh PM flees country, military takes over

Jubilant, cheering crowds stormed into the opulent grounds of the presidential residence unopposed, carrying out looted furniture and TVs.

Elsewhere in Dhaka, protesters climbed atop a statue of Hasina's father, state founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began chiseling away at the head with an axe.

The flight into exile ended a 15-year second stint in power for Hasina, who has ruled for 20 of the last 30 years as leader of the political movement inherited from her father, assassinated with most of his family in a 1975 coup.

Bangladesh has been engulfed by violence since student protests last month against the quotas, which reserve some public sector jobs for veterans of Bangladesh's 1971 independence war, seen as favoring allies of the ruling party.

The protests escalated into a campaign demanding the overthrow of Hasina, and were met by a violent crackdown in which about 250 people have been killed and thousands injured.