Bangladeshi student protesters stormed a prison and freed hundreds of inmates on Friday as police struggled to quell unrest, with huge rallies in the capital Dhaka despite a police ban on public gatherings.

This week’s unrest has killed at least 75 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by hospitals, and emerged as a momentous challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic government after 15 years in office.

Student protesters stormed a jail in the central Bangladeshi district of Narsingdi and freed the facility’s inmates before setting the facility on fire, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know the number of inmates, but it would be in the hundreds,” he added.

Dhaka’s police force took the drastic step of banning all public gatherings for the day — a first since protests began — in an effort to forestall another day of violence.

“We’ve banned all rallies, processions and public gatherings in Dhaka today,” police chief Habibur Rahman told AFP, adding the move was necessary to ensure “public safety”.

That did not stop another round of confrontations between police and protesters around the sprawling megacity of 20 million people, despite an internet shutdown aimed at frustrating the organisation of rallies.

“Our protest will continue,” Sarwar Tushar, who joined a march in the capital and sustained minor injuries when it was violently dispersed by police, told AFP.

“We want the immediate resignation of Sheikh Hasina. The government is responsible for the killings.”

‘Shocking and unacceptable’

At least 28 people were killed in the city on Friday, according to a list drawn up by the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and seen by AFP, along with two other deaths elsewhere in the country.

Police fire was the cause of more than half of the deaths reported so far this week, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital staff.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the attacks on student protesters were “shocking and unacceptable”.

“There must be impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations into these attacks, and those responsible held to account,” he said in a statement.

The capital’s police force earlier said protesters had on Thursday torched, vandalised and carried out “destructive activities” on numerous police and government offices.

Among them was the Dhaka headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which remains offline after hundreds of incensed students stormed the premises and set fire to a building.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP that officers had arrested Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, one of the top leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

“He faces hundreds of cases,” Hossain said, without giving further details on the reasons for Ahmed’s detention.

‘Symbol of a rigged system’

Near-daily marches this month have called for an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

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

Her administration this week ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police stepped up efforts to bring the deteriorating law and order situation under control.

“This is an eruption of the simmering discontent of a youth population built over years due to economic and political disenfranchisement,” Ali Riaz, a politics professor at Illinois State University, told AFP.

“The job quotas became the symbol of a system which is rigged and stacked against them by the regime.”

‘Nation-scale’ internet shutdown

Students say they are determined to press on with protests despite Hasina giving a national address on the now-offline state broadcaster seeking to calm the unrest.

Nearly half of Bangladesh’s 64 districts reported clashes on Thursday, broadcaster Independent Television reported.

The network said more than 700 people had been wounded throughout Thursday, including 104 police officers and 30 journalists.

London-based watchdog Netblocks said today that a “nation-scale” internet shutdown remained in effect a day after it was imposed.

“Metrics show connectivity flatlining at 10 per cent of ordinary levels, raising concerns over public safety as little news flows in or out of the country,” it wrote on social media platform X.