Clashes in a refugee camp north of Dhaka killed at least nine people during festival celebrations Saturday.

The shanty town in Mirpur suburb is home to a community of Bihari Muslims and authorities said tensions there had been rising.

Myanmar and Bangladeshi authorities Thursday vowed to strengthen border security and combat "illegal armed groups and criminals" following clashes on their shared frontier that Dhaka said left one of its soldiers dead.

The neighbors said they would take measures to avoid a repeat of "untoward" incidents in May, which saw gunfire exchanged between both countries' security forces, the Myanmar Police and Border Guard Bangladesh said in a joint statement.

Seven Bangladeshi sailors, held hostage by Somali pirates for almost four years, finally returned home Thursday, saying it was "unbelievable" to be alive and describing their ordeal as "like hell."

The sailors, who had been held in dire conditions and suffered beatings, flew into the Bangladeshi capital after the foreign ministry said they were freed last week after lengthy negotiations. 

The Bangladesh coastguard on Wednesday rescued a stricken boat in the Bay of Bengal packed with 300 nationals who were trying to flee to Malaysia, an official said.

At least four bodies were on board the Malaysia-bound boat, which was being towed to a Bangladeshi island in rough seas, the official and one of the passengers told Agence France Presse.

Navy divers have recovered 16 more bodies from the wreckage of a Bangladesh ferry as the death toll from the disaster rose to 45 with scores more feared drowned, officials said Saturday.

Two salvage vessels managed to float the sunken ship and brought it closer to the shore, allowing the divers to search inside of the 90-feet (30 meter) long boat three days after it sank following a storm.

Divers battled Friday to recover bodies trapped in the wreckage of a Bangladesh ferry that was sunk by a giant wave, as the death toll from the disaster rose to 29 with scores more feared drowned.

As survivors blamed the captain of the MV Miraz for refusing to take shelter from a gathering storm, an investigation was launched into whether it had been carrying too many passengers.

A heavily-laden ferry capsized and sank in central Bangladesh on Thursday after being caught in a storm, leaving at least six dead and hundreds more missing, police and officials said.

"We are receiving confusing figures on how many passengers were on board when it sank, but the number could range from 200 to 350," district government administrator Saiful Hasan told AFP.

Bangladesh's military has sacked three senior officers from a controversial elite unit over claims they abducted and killed seven people outside Dhaka, an official said Wednesday.

The armed forces official said the officers have been dismissed and handed early retirement from the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which rights groups blame for hundreds of extra-judicial killings.

Six people were dead and at least 19 others were missing after a ferry capsized Saturday when it was caught in a storm in the south of Bangladesh, a government official said.

The ferry, MV Shatil, sank in the middle of a river near Kalagasia, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital Dhaka.

A severe storm has killed 16 people dead and destroyed 1,000 homes in northern Bangladesh, police and government officials said Monday.

The storm tore through scores of villages overnight on Sunday, uprooting trees and electricity poles and derailing a train in an incident that injured dozens of passengers, they said.