Dhaka under fire over trapped workers in Libya

Police said hundreds of people demanding the swift return of the workers demonstrated in Bhairab, 80 kilometres from the capital, blocking the Dhaka-Sylhet highway for an hour before being peacefully dispersed.

"They sought the prime minister's intervention to bring the trapped Bangladeshis back home safely from Libya," local police chief Shajahan Kabir told AFP.There are some 60,000 Bangladeshis working in Libya, mostly low-paid contract workers in the construction industry.

The impoverished South Asian country has said it is seeking to ensure the workers' safety but has no immediate plans to transport them home, unlike several countries including neighbouring India, which sent its first two planes on Saturday to Libya to evacuate its workers.

Bangladeshi foreign minister Dipu Moni said earlier in the week that the government was "closely monitoring the situation and trying to move the workers to safety" and that "evacuation was an option".

Several hundred relatives also linked hands to form a human chain in front of the national press club in Dhaka on Saturday to protest lack of government efforts to repatriate the workers.

"My son told me by phone he has been without food for days. I appeal to the prime minister -- please bring him and all other Bangladeshi workers back home," a demonstrator told ATN News television.

Bangladeshi officials have said they are talking to the International Organisation for Migration about a possible evacuation, but that no plans or funding for the expensive operation have yet been agreed.

Kabir Hossain, 24, a construction worker, told AFP yesterday by telephone that he had been trapped in camp in the Libyan desert, 400 kilometres from Benghazi, where he worked for a foreign engineering group.

He said they were then moved out by his employer before being "abandoned in the middle of road"