Bangladesh interim government officials hoped for a breakthrough on Tuesday in a political crisis over a key election official, even as a transport blockade paralysed the country for a second day.
The caretaker government said it was confident of resolving the stand-off over opposition demands that it sack chief election commissioner M.A. Aziz, accused of trying to rig national polls in January.
"We finally see light at the end of the tunnel. We hope we will get a result within the next 24 to 48 hours," Mahbubul Alam, a member of the interim cabinet, told reporters.
Media reports also predicted a compromise over the election chief would be reached soon.
"Aziz, with all probability, may either go on leave until the elections are over or resign in a couple of days," said the English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, in a front page report.
The report said Aziz hinted to a delegation of interim cabinet members who visited him Monday he was likely to go on extended leave to perform the Muslim hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia next month.
The reports came as the country again ground to a halt, due to the opposition's transport blockade.
"Thousands of opposition supporters held rallies and demonstrations for the second day, but apart from some clashes on Dhaka University campus, we have no reports of any violence," said deputy commissioner of Dhaka police Aurangjeb Mahbub.
Police in the northern town of Bogra said they fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse activists. Around 15 people were injured.
In the south-eastern city of Chittagong, 10 more were injured in a clash as the two parties held rallies at the same location, police added.
The main opposition Awami League and its left-leaning allies have accused Aziz of trying to fix January elections in favour of the outgoing government, led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). They said free and fair polls were not possible while he was in charge.
The opposition earlier went ahead with threats to reimpose an indefinite transport shutdown.
It had called off a four-day-old blockade last Wednesday and gave President Iajuddin Ahmed, who heads the non-party caretaker body, until late last Sunday to sack Aziz or face renewed nation-wide disruptions.
In the capital and other main towns and cities, normal life was suspended, with cars off the streets, main highways blocked and shops, businesses and schools all closed.
Deliveries to and from the main Chittagong port remained suspended, with business leaders saying the blockades were costing the impoverished country's textile exporters more than 70 million dollars a day.
Thousands of opposition protesters had barricaded all roads leading to the port, said Mofazzel Haq, head of Chittagong police special branch.
The opposition has staged dozens of protests and national strikes this year aimed at ousting officials it accuses of political bias.
Four days of clashes between rival party activists from October 27, when the BNP government's five-year tenure ran out, left at least 25 people dead.
The clashes came as the opposition held mass protests against K.M. Hasan, the outgoing government's choice for the post of head of the caretaker government.
The opposition said that as a former BNP official in the late 1970s he would be partisan, and he eventually declined the post amid spiralling violence.