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DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh broke out of a hospital and arrested the leaders of a student protest that led to nationwide unrest last week as security forces clashed with demonstrators.

Students have been protesting since early July against a rule that reserves a large portion of government jobs for descendants of those who fought in the country’s 1971 liberation war.

At least 209 people have been killed and thousands injured, according to a count based on local media reports, after protests turned violent last week.

The most casualties were reported in Dhaka, where there were intense clashes between protesters, government supporters, police and paramilitary troops as the country went into a six-day communications blackout.

Among the wounded were student leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, coordinators of Students Against Discrimination, the main group organizing the protests. They were patients of Dhaka’s Gonoshasthya Hospital, from where they were arrested by the Detective Branch of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Friday evening. Another student leader visiting Islam and Mahmud, Abu Baker Majumder, was also detained.

Detective Branch chief Harun Or-Rashid told reporters in Dhaka on Saturday that the trio had been detained “for security reasons” as their families were worried about their safety.

“We have taken them into our custody for safekeeping,” he said.

The student leaders were arrested by a group of more than a dozen plainclothes officers despite the objections of medical staff, a hospital employee told Arab News.

“In the beginning, we tried to make them understand that without proper protocols, inpatients could not be discharged from the hospital. They later spoke to our authorities and the students were taken away from the hospital. There was no way we could keep them away,” said the hospital worker, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The health of the students was not so good… Asif was dealing with low blood pressure and Nahid was suffering from blood clots and bruises on various parts of his body. They both needed further treatment.”

The arrests come in a crackdown by police in Dhaka, where a shutdown imposed last week was still in effect.

Liton Kumar Saha, the joint commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said 2,284 people were arrested in Dhaka due to the clashes related to the protests, in which many government offices were set on fire.

“We are analyzing the footage from different places and identifying the miscreants. When we are confirmed to be involved in anarchy, we conduct arrest operations. It was carried out with transparency and we are checking the people who were involved in the sabotage,” he told Arab News.

“In the last 24 hours, 245 people have been arrested in Dhaka. Our leadership will continue until the situation returns to normal.”

International human rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about Bangladesh’s handling of the protests, with Amnesty International saying that witness accounts and video and photographic evidence “confirm the use of illegal force by police against student protesters”.

The protests erupted after the High Court upheld a controversial quota system in which 56 percent of civil service jobs were reserved for specific groups, including women, marginalized communities and the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters – for which the government allocates 30 percent of the posts to them.

The Supreme Court last week slashed the quota system, ordering that 93 percent of government jobs be awarded on merit.