Over 100,000 supporters of two major Bangladesh opposition parties rallied in the capital Dhaka on Saturday, police said, demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down to allow a free and fair vote under a neutral government.

Saturday’s rallies by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, were the biggest so far this year, AFP journalists on site said, and marked a new phase in their protests with a general election due within three months.

Hasina — daughter of the country’s founding leader — has been in power for 15 years and has overseen rapid economic growth with Bangladesh overtaking neighbouring India in GDP per capita, but inflation has risen and her government is accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

The resurgent opposition has been mounting protests to press their demands for months, despite the BNP’s ailing leader Khaleda Zia, a two-time premier and old foe of Hasina’s, being effectively under house arrest after a conviction on corruption charges.

Her supporters poured into Dhaka on Saturday, crammed into buses despite checkpoints on the road into the capital, and even rode on top of packed trains.

“Vote thief, vote thief, Sheikh Hasina vote thief,” chanted the crowd at the BNP demonstration in front of the party headquarters.

Student activist Sekandar Badsha, 24, from Chittagong, said: “We demand the immediate resignation of the Hasina government, release of our leader Khaleda Zia and establishing the people’s right to vote.”

At least 10,000 police had been deployed to prevent violence, officials said, but officers clashed with hundreds of protestors in the Kakrail neighbourhood in front of the city’s largest Catholic church, with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

“Some police officers were injured,” deputy police commissioner Akterul Islam told AFP.