Mourners surround Bangladesh\u2019s parliament in Dhaka to pay their respects to the country\u2019s first female prime minister.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vast crowds have gathered in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for the state funeral of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, with mourners travelling from across the country to bid farewell to a towering political leader.<\/p>\n Footage showed huge crowds streaming in towards the national parliament building on Manik Mia Avenue, where her coffin, draped in the national flag, was taken in a convoy on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Hundreds of thousands of her supporters, along with dignitaries from India and Pakistan, were expected to attend, with about 10,000 security personnel lining the streets to maintain order, officials said.<\/p>\n Khaleda, the first woman to serve as prime minister in the South Asian nation when she became premier in 1991, died on Tuesday aged 79, after a prolonged illness.<\/p>\n Bangladesh has declared three days of state mourning, while tributes have flowed from world leaders as mourners farewell a politician viewed as a figurehead of the country\u2019s democratic movement.<\/p>\n Reporting from outside parliament in Dhaka, Al Jazeera\u2019s Tanvir Chowdhury said emotions were high among the huge crowds gathered for the state funeral.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people are weeping,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were coming from all across the country to gather here. They said we have to come \u2026 to show that she will be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n Mourners had described her as \u201ca great leader for this country\u201d, saying she had \u201cshown us the way to democracy\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAn entire nation is grieving,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n One mourner, Sharmina Siraj, told the AFP news agency that Zia was \u201can inspiration\u201d, saying it was \u201cdifficult to imagine women in leadership positions anytime soon\u201d.<\/p>\n Siraj, a 40-year-old mother of two, said stipends introduced by Zia to support girls\u2019 education \u201chad a huge impact on the lives of our girls\u201d.<\/p>\n Watching from behind a barbed wire barricade as Zia\u2019s body passed by, retired government official Minhaz Uddin told AFP that while he had never voted for her, he came to honour the former leader.<\/p>\n \u201cI came here with my grandson, just to say goodbye to a veteran politician whose contributions will always be remembered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Zia\u2019s son Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh on Thursday after 17 years in self-imposed exile in the UK, said in a statement that the country was mourning \u201cthe loss of a guiding presence that shaped its democratic aspirations\u201d.<\/p>\n His mother, he said, had \u201cendured repeated arrests, denial of medical care, and relentless persecution\u201d, but \u201cher resilience \u2026 was unbreakable\u201d.<\/p>\n Rahman, the acting chairman of Khaleda\u2019s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, \u201cwill possibly be the next prime minister\u201d if his party wins the elections in February, Chowdhury said.<\/p>\n India\u2019s government said Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was due to attend the funeral, in the most senior visit by an Indian official since the overthrow of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Khaleda\u2019s great political rival.<\/p>\n Senior officials from Pakistan were also expected to attend.<\/p>\n Khaleda\u2019s body will be interred in a park outside the parliament building alongside her late husband, Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981 during his time as president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mourners surround Bangladesh\u2019s parliament in Dhaka to pay their respects to the country\u2019s first female prime minister. Vast crowds have gathered in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for the state funeral of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, with mourners travelling from across the country to bid farewell to a towering political leader. Footage showed huge crowds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018An entire nation is grieving\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"Mourners](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AFP__20251231__89BY9T3__v1__HighRes__BangladeshPoliticsZia-1767170085.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018A guiding presence\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"