Bangladesh deployed more than nine lakh security personnel across the country as the general election and referendum for the July Charter started on Thursday (February 12, 2026).

Bangladesh polls LIVE updates

The election process is unfolding during four days long national holiday, which was declared to ensure the peaceful conduct of polling that started at 7.30 a.m. Voting will continue till 4.30 p.m.

Chief Election Commissioner A.M.M. Nasir Uddin addressed the nation on Wednesday (February 11, 2026) night and appealed to all parties to accept the result of the election without resorting to violence. However, reports have poured in from multiple locations across the country of activists of Jamaat-e-Islami getting caught with bundles of cash.  The incidents came a day after a Jamaat leader was caught with nearly Taka 74 lakh in north Bangladesh.

Among top leaders, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) cast his ballot at Thakurgaon in north Bangladesh. BNP Chairman Tarique Rahman is contesting from Dhaka 17 in Gulshan neighbourhood of the capital, and Jamaat-e-Islami’s leader (Ameer) Dr. Shafiqur Rahman is contesting in Dhaka-15 in Mirpur locality. National Citizen Party’s Nahid Islam, who is being supported by the 11 party alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami is contesting from Dhaka – 11 constituency.

A significant contest will take place in Dhaka-8, where BNP’s strongman Mirza Abbas is being challenged by National Citizen Party’s Nasiruddin Patowary. Dhaka-8 is the seat where young Islamist Sharif Osman Hadi was planning to contest before he was shot and killed in December. Mr. Patowary’s challenge is significant as he is being supported by the 11-party alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami.

Bangladesh’s previous election was in January 2024, when the chief opposition BNP boycotted. Sheikh Hasina of Awami League formed a government after the election, but was overthrown in a public uprising in July-August 2024.

Awami League of Sheikh Hasina is not contesting the polls as it remains banned, but the party’s stronghold Gopalganj was rocked by violence overnight, with at least ten cocktail explosives being hurled as multiple groups clashed. Both BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami have accused Awami League of rigging the previous three elections of Bangladesh in 2024, 2018 and in 2014.

The death toll from a crackdown over Iran’s nationwide protests last month has reached at least 7,002 people killed with many more still feared dead, activists said on Thursday (February 12, 2026).

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which offered the latest figures, has been accurate in counting deaths during previous rounds of unrest in Iran and relies on a network of activists in Iran to verify deaths. The slow rise in the death toll has come as the agency slowly is able to crosscheck information as communication remains difficult with those inside of the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s government offered its only death toll on January 21, saying 3,117 people were killed. Iran’s theocracy in the past has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.

The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll, given authorities have disrupted internet access and international calls in Iran.

The rise in the death toll comes as Iran tries to negotiate with the United States over its nuclear programme.

Senior Iranian security official Ali Larijani met on Wednesday (February 11, 2026) in Qatar with Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Qatar hosts a major U.S. military installation that Iran attacked in June, after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June. Mr. Larijani also met with officials of the Palestinian Hamas militant group, and in Oman with Tehran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen on Tuesday (February 10, 2026).

Mr. Larijani told Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network that Iran did not receive any specific proposal from the U.S. in Oman, but acknowledged that there was an “exchange of messages”.

Qatar has been a key negotiator in the past with Iran, with which it shares a massive offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf. Its state-run Qatar News Agency reported that ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump about “the current situation in the region and international efforts aimed at de-escalation and strengthening regional security and peace”, without elaborating.

The U.S. has moved the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, ships and warplanes to the Middle East to pressure Iran into an agreement and have the firepower necessary to strike the Islamic Republic should Mr. Trump choose to do so.

Already, U.S. forces have shot down a drone they said got too close to the Lincoln and came to the aid of a U.S.-flagged ship that Iranian forces tried to stop in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Trump told the news website Axios that he was considering sending a second carrier to the region. “We have an armada that is heading there and another one might be going,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has hailed the trade deal with India as “historic” and said America will increase its coal exports dramatically to the country and to others with which it has trade agreements.

“And under our leadership, we’re becoming a massive energy exporter. In just the past few months, we’ve made historic trade deals with Japan, Korea, India and others to increase our coal exports dramatically,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday (February 11, 2025) during an event titled ‘Champion of Coal’.

“We’re now exporting coal all over the world, and the quality of our coal is supposed to be…the finest anywhere in the world,” he said.

Last week, the U.S. and India announced they have reached a framework for an interim agreement on trade, under which New Delhi will eliminate or reduce tariffs on all American industrial goods, a wide range of food and agricultural products, as well as purchase $500 billion of US products over the next five years.

A joint statement issued by the two countries on Friday (February 6) said they have reached a framework “regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade.”

It said that India “intends to purchase $500 billion of U.S. energy products, aircraft and aircraft parts, precious metals, technology products, and coking coal over the next five years.”

It added that the framework reaffirms the countries’ commitment to the broader U.S.-India Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) negotiations, launched by President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 13, 2025, which will include additional market access commitments and support more resilient supply chains.

An overnight ​drone attack sparked a ‌fire on the ​territory of ⁠an industrial facility in Russia’s southern region ‌of Volgograd, the regional ‌governor said on ‌Wednesday (February 11, 2026).

“Air ⁠defence units ⁠of the Russian Ministry of Defence are repelling ​a ‌massive terrorist attack by unmanned aerial vehicles on energy ‌and civilian infrastructure ​facilities in the Volgograd region,” ⁠the Governor, Andrei Bocharov, said on Telegram.

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The ‌attack caused damage to an apartment in a residential building, and drone debris ‌also fell on ​the territory of a kindergarten, he ⁠said.

There were no ⁠immediate reports of casualties.