Violent clashes between people loyal to Bangladesh’s ruling party and demonstrators protesting against job quotas for coveted government jobs have wounded at least 100 people, police say.

The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts, totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs, for specific groups, including children of fighters in the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth consecutive term in a general election in January that was boycotted by the opposition.

Bangladesh’s top court last week temporarily suspended the quotas, but protesters have promised to continue their rallies until the parts of the scheme they oppose are scrapped completely.

Police and witnesses said hundreds of antiquota protesters and students backing the ruling Awami League party battled for hours on Monday on the Dhaka University campus, hurling rocks, fighting with sticks and beating each other with iron rods.

Some carried machetes while others threw petrol bombs, witnesses said in a report by the AFP news agency. “They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at each other,” police official Mostajirur Rahman told AFP.

Nahid Islam, national coordinator of the antiquota protests, said their “peaceful procession” was attacked by people carrying rods, sticks and rocks. “They beat our female protesters. At least 150 students were injured, including 30 women, and conditions of 20 students are serious,” he said.

Injured student Shahinur Shumi, 26, said the protesters were taken by surprise.

“We were holding our procession peacefully,” she said from her hospital bed at Dhaka Medical Hospital. “Suddenly, the Chhatra League [ruling party’s student wing] attacked us with sticks, machetes, iron rods and bricks.”

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said an “attempt is being made to transform the anti-quota movement into an anti-state one using the emotions of young students”.

“The government will not allow an unstable situation to develop,” he said.

‘Reform quota system’

Local media reports said the protests by thousands of students across Bangladesh began on Sunday night and continued into Monday after Hasina said the quotas were a matter for the top court.

Hasina also reportedly compared the protesters to Razakar fighters, who collaborated with the Pakistani army during the war for independence.

Students on Sunday night marched in a dozen universities and continued into early on Monday, protesting against Hasina’s comments and the quota system.

Police on Monday said hundreds of antiquota students from several private universities joined the protests in Dhaka and halted traffic near the United States embassy for more than four hours.

“Some 200 students squatted and stood on the road,” deputy police commissioner Hasanuzzaman Molla told AFP.

During a news conference at her official residence, Hasina, 76, criticised those opposing the quotas for the descendants of the country’s freedom fighters, local media reports said.

But the protesting students said only the quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled people – which reserve 6 percent of the government jobs – should remain.

“We want a reform of the quota system,” a female student from Dhaka University said, asking not to be named for fear of reprisal.