The Bangladesh opposition has vowed to continue a national transport blockade which paralysed the country on Sunday as part of its campaign to oust an election chief accused of trying to rig January polls.
"The president has not implemented even a single one of our demands so we have no reason to call off our blockades and protests," said Tofael Ahmed, a senior leader of the main opposition Awami League.
The party wants a caretaker government to sack Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz ahead of national elections in January.
"It (the protest action) will continue until the chief election commissioner goes and the president shows his complete neutrality," he added.
A member of the caretaker government's cabinet, however, hinted that a solution might be reached this week.
"I think things will be cleared in the next three to four days. We're pondering over legal aspects of reform of the election commission and we hope that it will be acceptable to all parties," said former army chief Hasan Mashud Chowdhury, one of the ten-member cabinet.
In the capital, Dhaka, thousands of activists protested and held small rallies Sunday but the streets were otherwise deserted, with many schools and offices closed, police and witnesses said.
At least 15,000 police and paramilitaries were deployed, although there were no reports of any major violence.
The private Ntv television channel reported a number of clashes between rival party activists in district towns although no injuries were reported.
Opposition activists enforcing the indefinite nation-wide transport blockade torched a bus and one carriage of a train on the outskirts of the city, police said.
Mass protests took place in other main hubs, including the south-east port city of Chittagong and south-west Khulna, where highways and railway lines were also barricaded, local police chiefs told AFP.
The country's interim government, in place ahead of January polls warned of dire consequences if the transport blockade continued.
The protest action was "anti-constitutional and illegal" and would "cut the supply of food and other essential items to Dhaka's 12 million people, bringing a humanitarian disaster", it said in a statement.
Business leaders also urged an end to the protest action, warning it would cost the impoverished country millions in export earnings.
"We have estimated that the blockade will cost five billion taka (73 million dollars) a day to the textile industry alone," said S.M. Fazlul Hoque, president of the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
The main opposition Awami League and its 13 leftist allies said on Saturday they would resume earlier street protests and launch an indefinite transport blockade in protest at the caretaker government's failure to sack Aziz.
It vowed to bring the country to a standstill by blocking major transport routes and cutting off arteries to the main cities.
Last week the opposition alliance gave the president and head of the caretaker government -- tasked with holding fair elections in January -- until Saturday evening to prove his non-partisanship by replacing Aziz.
They accused Aziz of drawing up an electoral roll containing 10 million ghost voters.
President Iajuddin Ahmed installed himself as the country's interim chief on October 29 after the two main parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), failed to come up with a compromise candidate amid spiralling violence.
Four days of clashes between rival party activists from October 27, when the outgoing BNP-led government's five-year mandate expired, left 25 people dead and at least 2,000 injured.
The opposition earlier called off its protests, saying it wanted to give the president time to show he was sufficiently independent to hold elections that did not stack the cards in favour of the BNP.