Two members of a banned Bangladeshi radical group have been arrested for trying to recruit young Muslims to fight with the Islamic State organisation, police said Monday.

Aminul Islam Baig, 40, and Shakib bin Kamal, 30, were both arrested on Sunday night during raids at two addresses in Dhaka in which officers also recovered jihadist literature and computer equipment, police added.

A Bangladeshi blogger was hacked to death in Dhaka on Monday, the second such attack on a critic of religious fundamentalism in the mainly Muslim country in less than two months.

Three knife-wielding attackers set upon 27-year-old Washiqur Rahman near his home on Monday morning, weeks after the murder of an American atheist blogger in Dhaka triggered international outrage.

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.

At least 28 people have died in street battles between Bangladeshi police and tens of thousands of Islamists, officials said Monday, deepening the divide between the secular government and religious hardliners.

In some of the fiercest violence to rock the capital since independence four decades ago, hundreds more people were reported to have been injured as riot police broke up a mass rally near a key commercial district.

Bangladesh police fired live rounds on Friday in fierce clashes with Islamists demanding the execution of bloggers they accuse of blasphemy, killing at least four people and injuring about 200.

Two people were shot dead by police in the northwestern town of Palashbari, and two others died elsewhere, police told Agence France Presse.

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.

Four opposition activists were killed and nearly 200 people injured on Sunday when police opened fire at large Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) rallies in the southeast.

The shootings happened in the towns of Chandpur and Laksmipur after the party held demonstrations to demand that the government resign in a dispute over electoral reforms, police said.

The Bangladesh army said on Thursday that it had foiled a plot by more than a dozen "religiously fanatic" Islamist officers to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

"We have unearthed a heinous conspiracy to overthrow the democratic government through the army," army spokesman Brigadier General Masud Razzaq said in a written statement.

A Bangladeshi television channel said Thursday it was launching the country's first reality show for transgender people in an effort to break down widespread suspicion of the country's "hijra" community.

The ATN Bangla show, "Amra Tomadery" (We are for you), is now accepting applications to be one of around 40 contestants who will showcase their dancing and acting skills to win audience votes.

A Bangladeshi man who had his penis cut off by a woman who then took it to the police as evidence of attempted rape said Tuesday he was the victim of a revenge plot by his former lover.

Mozzammel Majhi's penis was severed by the 40-year-old woman, a married mother of three, who said she was attacked while sleeping. She gave the penis to police, who are keeping it at the police station in a jar of formaldehyde.