Bangladesh steps up airport security, bans visitors' entry

DHAKA: Bangladesh today stepped up airport security, temporarily banning visitors' entry at major aviation facilities amid fears of fresh sabotages after bomb attacks on a Shia rally and murders of two foreigners claimed by the dreaded Islamic State.

"Security measures have been beefed up at the airports across the country," home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told the state-run BSS news agency emerging from an inter- ministerial meeting chaired by civil aviation minister Rashed Khan Menon and joined by senior security officials.

Kamal, however, said the enhanced security steps for airports should not be termed as "security alert" and called the initiative part of government plans to ensure "world class security standard" in the aviation facilities of the country.

Security officials said they temporarily prohibited visitors' entry inside the major airports - enforced since this morning - as part of the intensified security vigil.

"Visitors are not being allowed inside the airport... the ban will remain enforced as long as it required," said Alamgir Hossain Shimul, senior assistant police super of Armed Police Battalion (APBN) at Shahjalal airport.

Another APBN official, Tanzila Akhter, however, said the temporary ban on the visitors' airport entry was not an unprecedented idea as similar steps were taken previously as well, as part of security exercises.

Last week, a 12-year-old boy was killed and about 90 others injured in blasts targeting a Shia procession in front of the community's main shrine in the Bangladeshi capital, the third attack in the country claimed by the dreaded Islamic State militant group within a month.

The bombing came just weeks after an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer were shot dead in attacks also claimed by the ISIS.