India's defense minister said Wednesday that New Delhi was concerned by Pakistan's decision last month to transfer management of a strategically located deep-sea port to China.

"In one sentence, it is a matter of concern for us," A.K. Antony told reporters in Bangalore where he inaugurated the Indian air show. "My answer is very straigtforward and simple."

Police fired rubber bullets Wednesday at hundreds of activists from Bangladesh's largest Islamic party during a second day of rioting sparked by the conviction of a top opposition figure for war crimes.

After four people were killed during violence that flared late into the night on Tuesday, dozens more Jamaat-e-Islami supporters were wounded when riot police tried to disperse fresh protests on Wednesday near Dhaka and the southwestern district of Khulna.

More than a million Muslims gathered on the banks of a river in Bangladesh on Friday to pray and listen to religious scholars at the start of the world's second largest annual Islamic congregation.

The streets of Dhaka were largely deserted as devotees flocked to the River Turag at Tongi, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital, where the Biswa Ijtema (World Muslim Congregation) is being held over the next three days.

More than a million Muslims gathered on the banks of a river in Bangladesh on Friday to pray and listen to religious scholars at the start of the world's second largest annual Islamic congregation.

The streets of Dhaka were largely deserted as devotees flocked to the River Turag at Tongi, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital, where the Biswa Ijtema (World Muslim Congregation) is being held over the next three days.

A Bangladeshi court Sunday sentenced five people to death for the murder of a Saudi diplomat in the capital Dhaka in March this year, a senior police official said.

Khalaf al-Ali, 45, the head of Saudi citizen affairs at the embassy, was shot while taking a late-night walk near his home in the city's Gulshan area. He was rushed to hospital where he died three hours later.

Bangladesh's livestock authorities are slaughtering around 150,000 chickens at a giant poultry farm near Dhaka after the worst outbreak of avian flu in five years, officials said Wednesday.

The deadly H5N1 strain of flu was detected at Bay Agro farm at Gazipur, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Dhaka, on Monday after dozens of chickens died, prompting the company to send samples to a laboratory for tests.

Conservationists have expressed alarm over the low number of turtles arriving on the coast of east India and Bangladesh for the nesting season, blaming overfishing and climate change for the decline.

Between November and March, several species of sea turtle, including the Olive Ridley, travel thousands of miles to nest on the sandy shores of Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.

A fire that killed 111 workers at a Bangladesh garment factory last month was caused by sabotage and managers at the plant prevented victims from escaping, the head of an official inquiry said Monday.

"We have found that the fire that gutted Tazreen Fashion factory in Ashulia was an act of sabotage," Main Uddin Khandaker told Agence France Presse after submitting a report into the November 24 tragedy to the government.

A teenage activist from an Islamist party in Bangladesh was killed during clashes in which police fired live bullets to disperse crowds ahead of a nationwide strike on Tuesday, officials said.

Local police chief Tariqul Islam told Agence France Presse that the cause of the activist's death was unclear while a medical official said the 18-year-old died after being admitted to hospital with a gunshot wound to the head.

Bangladeshi garment workers clashed with police on Monday as some 10,000 protested over the deaths of 110 people in the country's worst clothing factory fire, with demonstrations entering a second week.

Industrial police deputy director Moktar Ali said a false rumor about another fire in a plant sparked the latest protests as workers gathered in the streets of Ashulia, a manufacturing hub of 500 plants outside the capital Dhaka.