In Purana Paltan and nearby districts, police clashed with 10,000 demonstrators, some of whom who tried to ransack an office of the American Alico insurance company.

There were no immediate reports of arrests or injuries.

Witnesses said police burst nearly a dozen teargas shells to disperse the several hundred protestors from different Islamic groups who tried to break into a shop belonging to the US company BATA.

Local television networks said some protestors later stoned and damaged Alico's main building in nearby Motijheel business district, prompting police to react with teargas.

The trouble quickly spread, sending commuters and passersby running for shelter, witnesses said. Several vehicles were damaged.

The mob later attacked an office of the American delivery company DHL and set fire to a parked bus before police arrived and dispersed the protestors, an AFP photographer said.

Bangladesh, the world's third largest Muslim majority country, has seen almost daily anti-US and anti-war protests, but this was the first time they had turned violent.

Friday's violent protests followed growing calls from several Islamic as well as left-wing political groups asking Bangladeshis to boycott imported goods and services from the United States and Britain for sending troops to invade Iraq.

Earlier, thousands of activists from a dozen Islamic groups gathered outside the central Baitul Mukarram Mosque after weekly Friday prayers and staged demonstrations against the war.

The protestors later torched dozens of effigies of US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, witnesses said, adding similar anti-war demonstrations were also staged outside other major mosques of the capital after weekly prayers.

SPACE.WIRE