Bangladesh has arrested over 500 people, including several opposition leaders, in connection to student protests that turned violent and resulted in the deaths of at least 163 people.

The numbers were provided Monday by the government, which faced some tough questions from foreign diplomats over its disproportionate use of force to quell the demonstrations.

What began as demonstrations against politicized admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

A curfew has been imposed and soldiers are patrolling cities across the South Asian country while a nationwide internet blackout since Thursday has drastically restricted the flow of information to the outside world.

"At least 532 people have been arrested over the violence" since the unrest began, Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"They include some BNP leaders," he added, referring to the opposition Bangladesh National Party.

Bangladesh's top court on Sunday pared back the hiring quotas for specific groups for government jobs, which are seen as secure and sought-after.

The decision seems to have mollified university student leaders, whose demonstrations against the quota scheme have sparked nationwide clashes that have killed 163 people, including several police officers, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals.

The student organization behind the protests said Monday it was halting demonstrations for 48 hours.

"We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours," Nahid Islam, the top leader of the main protest organizer Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed.

"We demand that during this period the government withdraws the curfew, restores the internet and stops targeting the student protesters."

"We started this movement for reforming the quota," Islam said. "But we did not want quota reform at the expense of so much blood, so much killing, so much damage to life and property."

Islam was hospitalized after being picked up by unidentified individuals he alleged were plain-clothes police Sunday night and beaten, he said.

'Authorities to blame'

He blamed the actions of the authorities for the escalation of the protests.

We are not sure how many people were killed. The government is completely controlling the media," he said.

"People are expressing their anger at the government."

Ali Riaz, a professor of politics and leading Bangladesh expert at Illinois State University, described the violence as "the worst massacre by any regime since independence".

"The atrocities committed in the past days show that the regime is entirely dependent on brute force and has no regard for the lives of the people," he told AFP.

"These indiscriminate killings cannot be washed by a court ruling or a government announcement."

Diplomatic questions

Meanwhile, diplomats in Dhaka questioned Bangladeshi authorities' deadly response to the protests following a presentation by the foreign minister that blamed demonstrators for the violence, diplomatic officials said.

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud summoned ambassadors for a briefing Sunday and showed them a 15-minute video that sources said focused on damage caused by protesters.

But a senior diplomatic official in Dhaka, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that U.S. ambassador Peter Haas said Mahmud was presenting a one-sided version of events.

"I am surprised you did not show the footage of police firing at unarmed protesters," the source quoted Haas as telling the minister.

A U.S. embassy official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the ambassador's comments.

The diplomatic source added that Mahmud did not respond to a question from a United Nations representative about the alleged use of U.N.-marked armored personnel carriers and helicopters to suppress the protests.

Bangladesh is a major contributor to U.N. peacekeeping operations around the world – earning significant revenues from its efforts – and has U.N.-marked equipment in its military inventories.

Government figures have repeatedly blamed the protesters and opposition for the violence.

Dhaka police spokesman Hossain said at least three policemen had been killed in the capital and about 1,000 injured, at least 60 of them critically.

The detainees included the BNP's third-most senior leader Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury and its spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, he said.

A former national football captain turned senior BNP figure, Aminul Huq, was also held, he added, as was Mia Golam Parwar, the general secretary of the country's largest Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

'Freedom fighter' quota

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the quota scheme's reintroduction deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

The Supreme Court decision curtailed the number of reserved jobs from 56% of all positions to 7%, most of which will still be set aside for the children and grandchildren of "freedom fighters" from Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

While the decision represented a substantial reduction to the contentious "freedom fighter" category, with 93% of jobs to be awarded on merit, it fell short of protesters' demands to scrap it altogether.

The "freedom fighter" quota in particular is resented by young graduates, with critics saying it is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's ruling Awami League.

Opponents accuse her government of bending the judiciary to its will.

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

Her government has at times been accused of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.