Bangladeshi customs authorities seized nearly 27 kilograms of gold, worth about $1.7 million, from a North Korean diplomat on Friday after he tried to smuggle in the bullion using diplomatic immunity.

Armed police and customs officials at Dhaka airport challenged Son Young Nam, the first secretary of the North Korean embassy in the city, on Thursday night after he arrived on a flight from Singapore.

Indian police were Friday investigating two separate lynchings in which men were beaten to death by frenzied crowds in anger over alleged assaults on young women.

In the northeastern state of Nagaland, a curfew was imposed on Dimapur city after a mob dragged a rape suspect out of jail on Thursday, killing him and stringing him up from a clock tower. Another man was killed in the subsequent police firing.

Diplomats called for an end to the violent unrest in Bangladesh as tensions rose further Wednesday when opposition leader Khaleda Zia again failed to appear at a corruption trial despite facing the threat of arrest.

Mission heads from nine countries, including the United States and several European countries, met Zia at her office late Tuesday where the Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader has been holed up since early January.

Bangladesh's elite security force said they had arrested an Islamist Monday over last week's murder of the atheist American blogger Avijit Roy, accusing him of being behind earlier death threats on social media.

"He is the main suspect" in the killing of Roy, said a spokesman for the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) after Farabi Shafiur Rahman was arrested in the capital Dhaka.

Hundreds of Bangladeshis demanded justice on Sunday for the killers of an atheist blogger hacked to death with machetes, as they gathered to pay tribute to the critic of religious extremism.

Avijit Roy, an U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was killed by unknown attackers on Thursday night. He had received numerous death threats from Islamist militant groups.

Washington Friday condemned the "brutality and cowardice" of the killing of an American blogger of Bangladeshi origin and called his murder an assault on the country's "proud tradition" of free speech.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms the brutal murder of Avijit Roy," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Dhaka on Friday to denounce the murder of a prominent American blogger of Bangladeshi origin hacked to death with machetes after he allegedly received threats from Islamists.

The demonstrators -- including teachers, publishers and fellow writers -- met near the spot where Avijit Roy, founder of Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog, was attacked by unknown assailants as he returned home from a book fair with his wife on Thursday evening.

Four Bangladeshi workers were among five people killed when fire engulfed their sleeping accommodation in Saudi Arabia, Dhaka's embassy said on Thursday.

The blaze erupted at about 1:30 am on Monday (2230 GMT Sunday) in the container in which the workers slept, the embassy's labor counselor told AFP.

The death toll in a ferry tragedy in central Bangladesh hit 78 on Wednesday, after rescuers recovered more bodies floating kilometers downstream from the site of Sunday's accident, officials said.

The overcrowded boat sank within minutes of colliding with a cargo vessel on the Padma river in central Bangladesh, which is heavily reliant on ferries for transport but has a poor safety record.

A prominent Bangladesh opposition politician was abducted on Tuesday, allegedly by police, days after he appeared to say he was open to seeking military intervention to end the country's deadly political crisis.

The family of Mahmudur Rahman Manna, 63, who has been trying to forge an alternative third political force in Bangladesh, said he was picked up by plain-clothed police officers from his niece's home in the capital Dhaka.