Protesters stormed Paraguay’s Congress building and set it on fire on Friday amid violent demonstrations over a secret Senate vote earlier in the day to approve a bill that would allow President Horacio Cartes to run for re-election.

Television images showed protesters breaking the glass windows of the South American country’s Congress after several hours of escalating violence and confrontations with police.

According to local media reports, the demonstrators managed to storm the first floor of the Congress after overrunning the poorly armed police lines. The rioters set fire to papers and chairs causing the flames to spread throughout the floor.

The building was eventually cordoned off by police after the entire ground floor reportedly burned down. According to local media, some MP’s are still inside the building.

‘We guarantee that the police will not repress [you] again. We ask you not to break down the fences, not to try to enter the building of Congress,’ said police commander, Crisis Sotelo, in a desperate televised plea to the rioters. ‘We ask for calm, tranquillity.’

This is the second time Friday that anti-riot police are confronting the protesters. After the initial demonstration was repelled by rubber bullets and water cannons, the protest grew more violent after nightfall.

Local media reports that several people have been hurt by rubber bullets. Among those who reportedly hit by rubber bullets is the former Minister of the Interior, Rafael Filizzola, of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, and the presidential candidate from Authentic Radical Liberal Party, Efraín Alegre.

Paraguay’s constitution, adopted in 1992, allowed for the country's presidents to serve only a single term in office to guard against a return to dictatorship in a country where Alfredo Stroessner ruled for more than 30 years.

But an agreement between the ruling government and the opposition resulted in the approval of the amendment that would allow Paraguay’s president, Horacio Cartes of the Colorado Party to run for re-election in 2018. The reform will also allow left-wing former president Fernando Lugo, who held power from 2008 to 2012, to run for office again.

Before the amendment is cemented, it must be approved by the Chamber of Deputies, where 44 of the 80 members belong to the ruling Colorado Party. The vote will take place early on Saturday, according to a document posted on the lower chamber's official Twitter account.

Those in opposition to the re-election amendment have promised to resist the move, calling the change to the country’s constitution a ‘coup d’etat’ and the imposition of a ‘dictatorship’.