A policeman has been charged with trafficking after a Rohingya woman was allegedly lured from a shelter in southern Thailand and subsequently raped by a man from the refugee Muslim minority, police told AFP Friday.

It is believed to be the first time a Thai official has been charged with trafficking of Rohingya boat people, despite probes into alleged people smuggling by authorities including the army.

Britain is planning to force visitors from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and other countries whose nationals are deemed to pose a "high risk" of immigration abuse to provide a cash bond before they can enter the country, a report said Sunday.

The Sunday Times newspaper said that from November, a pilot scheme would target visitors from those three countries plus Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Ghana.

A court in Bangladesh sentenced Thursday 10 Islamic militants to death after finding them guilty of assisting a suicide bombing that killed eight people, a prosecutor said.

A judge announced the sentence to a crowded court room in the capital Dhaka, special public prosecutor Rafiqul Islam told AFP.

Protesters clashed with police in several towns across Bangladesh on Monday as the latest strike declared by the nation's largest Islamic party paralyzed much of the country.

Shops and schools were closed in the capital Dhaka and major roads were largely deserted after the Jamaat-e-Islami party called for a nationwide strike to denounce the jailing on Sunday of Islamist leaders by a war crimes tribunal.

Three small homemade bombs exploded after being hurled at the house of Bangladesh's foreign minister early on Tuesday but no one was injured, police and an official said.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni is currently in London but her family was at home when the bombs were thrown at the residence, her spokesman Monirul Islam Kabir told Agence France Presse.

Bangladeshi police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at thousands of garment workers Monday as they demanded a wage hike at a protest in a manufacturing hub outside the capital Dhaka.

Police said they reacted after workers blocked a key highway in the Ashulia industrial area, home to hundreds of factories which make clothing for Western retailers such as Walmart.

Hundreds of garment factories in a Bangladesh manufacturing hub reopened Friday, days after they were closed down due to unrest sparked by the country's worst industrial tragedy, employers said.

Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association shut down the factories at the Ashulia industrial area on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka earlier this week after tens of thousands of workers went on the rampage.

A cyclone slammed into the Bangladesh coast on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of a million people, but fears of devastating damage eased when the storm weakened as it moved over land.

Authorities breathed a sigh of relief after Cyclone Mahasen, which was packing winds of 100 kilometers an hour (60 miles) when it powered into the low-lying southeastern coast, lost much of its punch after making landfall.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh and Myanmar were ordered Wednesday to move to safety as a cyclone barrelled towards low-lying coastal areas.

The United Nations has warned that more than eight million people could be at risk from Cyclone Mahasen, which is expected to make landfall on Thursday or Friday somewhere near the border between the two countries.

The death toll in Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster on Friday soared past 1,000 after more bodies were found in the rubble of a collapsed nine-storey building outside the capital Dhaka.

Army spokesman Captain Shahnewaz Zakaria told Agence France Presse that the "death toll now stands at 1,006" as the recovery operation entered its 17th day since the building caved in at Savar town, 30 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Dhaka.