Bomb blast in Bangladesh school: 3 injures

A bomb shook a village school in central Bangladesh on Tuesday, injuring three teenage students and causing minor damage, police said. The explosion occurred in a classroom at a school in the district of Munshiganj, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Dhaka, said the area's police chief, Noor Hossain.

"There were only about 10 students in the classroom when the bomb went off and three of them were slightly injured," Hossain told reporters. "It was still early for the lesson to start and the teacher to come." There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast at Shamsherpur School, Hossain said. Police were investigating.

Hossain said the bomb caused a loud bang and filled the classroom at the tin-roofed school with smoke, but only a wooden door was slightly damaged by the blast.

Regardless, authorities canceled classes for the day at the school, which has dozens of other students, most of whom had been gathering in classrooms or playing in a nearby soccer field when the blast went off, Abdur Rashid, a local resident, told The Associated Press by phone.

Bangladesh has been shaken in recent months by a wave of bomb attacks blamed on militants seeking to establish Islamic rule in this Muslim-majority nation governed by ecular laws. The militants have largely targeted government officials and the courts, not schools, and 26 people have been killed and dozens wounded in the violence since August, reports the AP. N.U.