Po­lice im­posed a strict cur­few with a “shoot-on-sight” or­der across Bangladesh as mil­i­tary forces pa­trolled parts of the cap­i­tal Sat­ur­day af­ter scores were killed and hun­dreds in­jured in clash­es over the al­lo­ca­tion of civ­il ser­vice jobs.

The cur­few be­gan at mid­night and was re­laxed from noon to 2 p.m. for peo­ple to run es­sen­tial er­rands, and is ex­pect­ed to last un­til 10 a.m. Sun­day, al­low­ing of­fi­cers to fire on mobs in ex­treme cas­es, said law­mak­er Obaidul Quad­er, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the rul­ing Awa­mi League par­ty.

The demon­stra­tions — called for main­ly by stu­dent groups— start­ed weeks ago to protest a quo­ta sys­tem that re­serves up to 30% of gov­ern­ment jobs for rel­a­tives of vet­er­ans who fought in Bangladesh’s War of In­de­pen­dence in 1971. Vi­o­lence erupt­ed Tues­day, with the Dai­ly Pro­thom Alo news­pa­per re­port­ing the death of at least 103 peo­ple.

Fri­day was like­ly to be the dead­liest day so far; So­moy TV re­port­ed 43 killed, while an As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porter saw 23 bod­ies at Dha­ka Med­ical Col­lege and Hos­pi­tal, but it was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether they all died on Fri­day. On Thurs­day, 22 oth­ers were re­port­ed dead as protest­ing stu­dents at­tempt­ed to “com­plete­ly shut down” the coun­try.

The Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Dha­ka said Fri­day that re­ports in­di­cat­ed “hun­dreds to pos­si­bly thou­sands” were in­jured across Bangladesh. It said the sit­u­a­tion was “ex­treme­ly volatile.”

Bangladeshi au­thor­i­ties haven’t shared any of­fi­cial num­bers of those killed and in­jured.

Of­fi­cials said the cur­few was to quell fur­ther vi­o­lence af­ter po­lice and pro­test­ers clashed in the streets and at uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es in Dha­ka and oth­er cities across the South Asian coun­try. Au­thor­i­ties blocked on­line com­mu­ni­ca­tions by ban­ning mo­bile and in­ter­net ser­vices. Sev­er­al tele­vi­sion news chan­nels al­so went off the air, and the web­sites of most lo­cal news­pa­pers were down. Mean­while, some key gov­ern­ment web­sites, in­clud­ing Bangladesh’s cen­tral bank and the prime min­is­ter’s of­fice, ap­peared to have been hacked and de­faced.

Lo­cal me­dia al­so re­port­ed that some 800 in­mates fled from a prison in Nars­ing­di, a dis­trict north of the cap­i­tal af­ter pro­test­ers stormed the fa­cil­i­ty and set it on fire Fri­day.

The chaos high­lights cracks in Bangladesh’s gov­er­nance and econ­o­my and the frus­tra­tion of youths who lack good jobs up­on grad­u­a­tion. They al­so rep­re­sent the biggest chal­lenge to Prime Min­is­ter Sheikh Hasi­na since she won a fourth con­sec­u­tive term in of­fice af­ter Jan­u­ary’s elec­tions, boy­cotted by the main op­po­si­tion groups.

Pro­test­ers ar­gue the quo­ta sys­tem is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ben­e­fits sup­port­ers of Hasi­na, whose Awa­mi League par­ty led the in­de­pen­dence move­ment, say­ing it should be re­placed with a mer­it-based sys­tem. Hasi­na has de­fend­ed the quo­ta sys­tem, say­ing that vet­er­ans de­serve the high­est re­spect for their con­tri­bu­tions in the war against Pak­istan, re­gard­less of their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both sides met late Fri­day in an at­tempt to reach a res­o­lu­tion. At least three stu­dent lead­ers were present and de­mand­ed the re­form of the cur­rent quo­ta sys­tem, the re­open­ing of stu­dent dor­mi­to­ries shut by the po­lice fol­low­ing the clash­es and for some uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials to step down af­ter fail­ing to pro­tect cam­pus­es from the vi­o­lence. Law Min­is­ter Anisul Huq said late Fri­day the gov­ern­ment was open to dis­cussing their de­mands.

The main op­po­si­tion Bangladesh Na­tion­al­ist Par­ty has backed the protests, vow­ing Fri­day to or­ga­nize its own demon­stra­tions as many of its sup­port­ers joined the stu­dents’ protests. How­ev­er, BNP said in a state­ment its fol­low­ers were not re­spon­si­ble for the vi­o­lence and de­nied the rul­ing par­ty’s ac­cu­sa­tions of us­ing the protests for po­lit­i­cal gains.

The Awa­mi League and the BNP have of­ten ac­cused each oth­er of fu­el­ing po­lit­i­cal chaos and vi­o­lence, most re­cent­ly ahead of the coun­try’s na­tion­al elec­tion, which was marred by a crack­down on sev­er­al op­po­si­tion fig­ures. Hasi­na’s gov­ern­ment had ac­cused the op­po­si­tion par­ty of at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt the vote.

In 2018, the gov­ern­ment halt­ed the job quo­tas fol­low­ing mass stu­dent protests. But in June, Bangladesh’s High Court nul­li­fied that de­ci­sion and re­in­stat­ed the quo­tas af­ter rel­a­tives of 1971 vet­er­ans filed pe­ti­tions. The Supreme Court sus­pend­ed the rul­ing, pend­ing an ap­peal hear­ing, and said in a state­ment it will take the is­sue up Sun­day.

Hasi­na has called on pro­test­ers to wait for the court’s ver­dict.

Saaliq re­port­ed from New Del­hi, In­dia.

DHA­KA, Bangladesh (AP) —