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 today.

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 the military headquarters here yesterday, 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 yesterday.

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 last month 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 the capital here, 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 included people from all strata of 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 were also expected.

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

Members of the Bangladeshi Student Association in Denmark (Basad) display placards as they demonstrate in front of the Bangladeshi embassy in Klampenborg, Copenhagen.

Garment factories and banks reopened in Bangladesh on July 24 after authorities eased a curfew imposed to contain deadly clashes sparked by student protests over civil service employment quotas.

Last week’s violence killed at least 186 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, during some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

Police have arrested at least 2,500 people since the violence began last week.

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

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

Hundreds of thousands of protesters were expected to rally here and nationwide.

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 the capital, with the main rallies held in the city’s central Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered this morning.

“We will hold our protests and rallies peacefully,” the group said in a statement yesterday.

“But if anyone attacks us, we urge (all) to take all preparations.”

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

It had 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 was 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 early last month over the reintroduction of the quota scheme, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It had since been scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court.