DHAKA, Aug 4 — Thousands of Bangladeshi protesters, many wielding sticks, crowded into a central Dhaka square today for mass protests demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign following a deadly police crackdown.

Asif Mahmud, one of the key protest leaders in a nationwide civil disobedience campaign, asked supporters to be ready to fight.

"Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

While the army stepped in to help restore order in the wake of earlier protests, some former military officers have since joined the student movement, and ex-army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.

Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman spoke to officers at military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday, telling them the "Bangladesh Army is the symbol of trust of the people”.

"It always stood by the people and will do so for the sake of people and in any need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement issued late Saturday.

The statement did not give further details, and did not explicitly say whether the army backed the protests.

Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem in July that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Troops briefly restored order but crowds returned to the streets in huge numbers this week in an all-out non-cooperation movement aimed at paralysing the government.

Yesterday, when hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka, the police were largely bystanders watching the rallies.

‘Live freely’

The protests have grown into a wider anti-government movement across the South Asian nation of some 170 million people.

The mass movement includes people from all strata of Bangladesh society, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs calling for people’s support have spread widely on social media.

"It is no longer about job quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name, as she scrawled graffiti on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka calling Hasina a "killer”.

"What we want is that our next generation can live freely in the country.”

Counter-protests supporting the government are also expected.

Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Hasina’s ruling Awami League, has called on party activists to gather in "all wards in Dhaka city” and "in every district” nationwide to show their support for the government.

"We don’t want to engage in any kind of confrontation,” Quader said.

The capital Dhaka was tense on Sunday, with fewer cars and buses on the normally congested streets of the megacity of 20 million people.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to rally in Dhaka and nationwide.

‘Take all preparations’

Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising the initial protests, called for rallies across the country.

Protests will be held at entry points to Dhaka, with the main rallies held in Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered on Sunday morning.

"We will hold our protests and rallies peacefully,” the group said in a statement late Saturday. "But if anyone attacks us, we urge (all) to take all preparations.”

Students Against Discrimination have asked their compatriots to stop paying taxes and utility bills from today to pile pressure on the government.

They have also asked government workers and labourers in the country’s economically vital garment factories to strike.

Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of the quota scheme, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court. — AFP