DHAKA: A court in Bangladesh has sentenced 10 members of an outlawed Islamist militant group to death for a bomb attack on a Communist Party rally in 2001 that killed five people and injured over 50.

Judge Mohammed Rabiul Alam of the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Court made the announcement today.

The members belong to the banned group Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami, which considers the Communist Party an anti-Islamic force.

The government of Bangladesh banned the group in 2005.