Dhaka: At least three people were killed in Bangladesh on Tuesday during violent clashes between rival groups over quotas for coveted government jobs, police said, a day after more than 400 people were injured.

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets as students demanding quotas be cut battled with counter-protesters backing the ruling Awami League party, fighting with sticks and hurling rocks.

The violence is an escalation in efforts to hinder a determined campaign that has ignored calls by Bangladesh’s prime minister and top court for the students to return to class.

Students have for weeks staged near-daily protests demanding the government introduce a merit-based scheme instead.

The quota scheme reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts for specific groups, including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war from Pakistan.

Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups that back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 76, who won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

– ‘Opened fire’ -On Tuesday, opposing student groups marched in several locations around Dhaka, some throwing bricks at each other.

“Students were protesting in at least a dozen places in the capital,” Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP.

Rallies elsewhere in Bangladesh were joined by hundreds of students, who blocked rail lines and highways.

In the southwestern port city of Chittagong, a student and a labourer were killed, said Ala Uddin, a police inspector at Chittagong Medical College Hospital.

“The labourer had bullet injuries but the student had other injuries,” Uddin told AFP.

In the northern city of Rangpur, police commissioner Mohammad Moniruzzaman told AFP a student had been killed in clashes.

He did not give details as to how the student died, but said police had fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Rangpur Medical College hospital director Yunus Ali said the “student was brought dead to the hospital by other students”, adding that “his body had marks of injuries”.

Tauhidul Haque Siam, a student reporter from Rokeya University, said ruling party supporters had attacked anti-quota protesters, while police fired shotguns — which usually fire rubber bullets or plastic pellets.

“Police opened fire from their shotguns on the protesters,” Siam said, adding he had been injured.

He said the dead student had been “killed in the firing incident”, but it was not possible to verify his account.

In Dhaka, teenagers also joined the protests.

One schoolgirl told AFP that the ruling party’s youth wing had “attacked us with firearms, (Molotov) cocktails, machetes and sticks”.

On Monday, demonstrators said they were holding peaceful marches in Dhaka when they were attacked by student activists from the ruling party.

In that violence, police inspector Bacchu Mia said 297 people were treated at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, with 12 serious enough to have been admitted.

More than 100 students were treated at Dhaka’s Jahangirnagar University’s medical centre, its chief Shamsur Rahman said, and 11 more at the city’s Enam Medical College Hospital.

“Four people, including a professor who was hit with rubber bullets, are still admitted,” said Yousuf Ali, a doctor at the Enam centre.

Monday’s clashes were the worst violence since the campaign began, and Amnesty International urged Bangladesh to “immediately guarantee the safety of all peaceful protesters”.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller also denounced the “violence against peaceful protesters”, in a statement Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said was disappointing.