Dhaka  - Bangladesh is to form a high-level anti-terrorism committee to both tackle the threat of attacks and educate the public about possible dangers, the government announced on Wednesday.

The body - to be headed by Home Affairs Minister Tanjim Ahmed Sohel Taj - will also attempt to counter propaganda from radical Islamist groups, and boost intelligence operations and surveillance.

Bangladesh's Awami League-led coalition government pin-pointed poverty and ignorance as key breeding grounds for Islamist militants in the mainly Muslim country.

Dhaka  - Movements of ships at Bangladesh's prime Chittagong sea port were suspended Wednesday after a lighter vessel sunk in the Karnaphuli channel late Tuesday night, officials said.

More than 40 ships remained stranded at the outer anchorage while five others remained stuck at the port after the clinker-laden vessel, caught up in a stormy weather, capsized in the channel.

"We have made preparations to remove the vessel from the channel, but the rescue operation is yet to begin," Fariduddin Ahmed, the secretary of the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), said.

Dhaka - Wild elephants trampled to death three people, including two children, in far south-eastern Bangladesh as they were collecting firewood, media reports said Wednesday.

They were trampled Tuesday at Teknaf hill near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, 374 kilometres south-east of the capital, Dhaka.

Two of the victims died on the spot when the elephants crushed them after knocking down while the third victim succumbed to her injuries at a nearby health complex, said Yunus Sheikh, a vice chairman of the Teknaf subdistrict.

Dhaka - Bangladesh's Awami League-led alliance government is to set up programmes to rehabilitate "innocent people" who get involved in militancy due to poverty, a junior minister said Tuesday.

"Many poor innocent people have been recruited by the militant outfits operating in the name of Islamist movements. They are simply lured and misguided by the terrorists," Tamjim Ahmed Sohel Taj, state minister for home affairs, told a group of journalists.

Dhaka - Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed left Dhaka for Riyadh early Tuesday to discuss with Saudi leaders the welfare of over 2 million Bangladeshi expatriate workers in the gulf kingdom, officials said.

Hasina is scheduled to meet Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdullah Aziz Al Saud on the first day of her five-day visit.

Dhaka  - Bangladesh is planning stringent measures to fight cyber crimes amid the rapid expansion of information and communication technology and telecommunications networks in the impoverished South Asian country, an official said Monday.

"We have taken steps afresh to facilitate fair and secured use of the information technology as the country lacks a complete law to deal with cyber crimes," MM Neazuddin, a joint secretary to the science and ICT ministry, told the German Press Agency dpa.