Bangladesh sent in troops to guard Buddhist neighborhoods on Monday after Muslim mobs carried out fresh attacks on temples and homes over a Facebook photo deemed offensive to Islam.

At least six temples were attacked in different neighborhoods of the resort region of Cox's Bazaar on late Sunday, with thousands of protestors smashing statues of Lord Buddha before riot police used force to repel the crowds.

Thousands of rioters torched Buddhist temples and homes in southeastern Bangladesh Sunday over a photo posted on Facebook deemed offensive to Islam, in a rare attack against the community.

Officials said the mob comprising some 25,000 people set fire to at least five Buddhist temples and dozens of homes in Ramu town and its adjoining villages, some 350 kilometers (216 miles) from the capital Dhaka.

Most schools, shops and offices were closed in Bangladesh on Sunday as opposition parties enforced a nationwide strike to protest against the mocking of the Prophet Mohammed in a U.S. Internet film.

Thousands of police patrolled the capital Dhaka and roads were quiet across the country on what is normally a business day in the Muslim-majority country of 153 million people.

The World Bank said Thursday that it could reconsider its decision to cancel a $1.2 billion loan to Bangladesh for a major road and rail bridge, but only if authorities keep pledges to fight corruption.

In late June, the Washington-based lender cancelled its planned financing for the $3 billion Padma bridge project, saying the government in Dhaka had not cooperated in investigating "high-level" corruption in the project.

About 100 protesters burnt the United States' flag and chanted slogans in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Thursday to demonstrate against an anti-Islam Internet film.

The demonstrators, mostly students at Islamic seminaries, hit the flag with shoes before setting it ablaze in front of the Baitul Mokarram Mosque, Bangladesh's biggest mosque.

Bangladesh said on Monday that nine forest officials had been suspended for "gross negligence" after three Bengal tiger cubs were found in a house in Dhaka where they were being kept by smugglers.

Bangladesh's elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) rescued the two-month-old cubs in June after a tip-off that the endangered animals from the Sundarbans mangrove forest were in cages at the house ready to be sold.

A Bangladesh court Tuesday jailed 665 border guards for their role in a bloody 2009 military mutiny, bringing the total number of soldiers imprisoned for the unrest to over 5,000, a prosecutor said.

Fifty-seven senior army officers were killed during an uprising that began when soldiers at the Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR) headquarters in the capital Dhaka went on a killing spree, later dumping victims' bodies in sewers and shallow graves.

U.S. prosecutors are looking into whether British bank HSBC was involved in laundering money for Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed federal authorities with direct knowledge of the investigations, the newspaper said the investigators were also probing whether HSBC circumvented U.S. law by transferring money through its American subsidiary for sanctioned nations, including Iran, Sudan and North Korea.

When Abdus Sattar built his house in Mahasthangarh village in northern Bangladesh, he used materials that once laid the foundations of one of the world's oldest and greatest cities.

"I just shoveled into the ground, got these bricks and used them in my new house," Sattar, 38, said. "All three rooms of the house were made of the old bricks we found here within the village boundary."

Thousands of Indians from the northeast of the country have fled southern cities after rumors they would be attacked by Muslims in reprisal for recent ethnic violence, officials said Thursday.

Railway officials said they had put on extra trains from Bangalore to the northeastern state of Assam to accommodate a spike in demand after 6,000 tickets were sold since Wednesday evening.