Petrol bomb near India president's Dhaka hotel

The foreign ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "protesters threw a crude cocktail bomb near the gate of the hotel where the Indian president is staying in Dhaka".

The official said nobody was injured and the president would continue his three-day state visit, which is set to finish on Tuesday.

A statement from the president's office said nobody in the delegation had heard the "minor explosion".

"Bursting of such cocktails are common in Bangladesh during hartals (shut-downs) and cannot be described as a bomb," said the statement.

Local policeman Apurba Hasan told AFP that officers had heard "a loud noise about 200 metres (650 feet) outside the hotel".

The Indian president is on a three-day state visit to Bangladesh, which has coincided with the worst violence in the country since independence in 1971.

The country's main Islamic party has enforced a two-day strike over the conviction of three of its top leaders for war crimes.

Sixty-four people have died since the vice-president of Jamaat-e-Islami was sentenced to death last Thursday.

In an apparent fall-out of the domestic political standoff, opposition leader Khaleda Zia cancelled her meeting with Mukherjee that was scheduled for Monday.