At least 56 people have been killed and thousands of homes torched in Buddhist-Muslim violence in western Myanmar, casting a shadow over the reformist government's attempts to remake the country's international image.

People have fled their homes in droves following the latest clashes in Rakhine state, which was rocked by communal violence in June that split communities and left tens of thousands of mainly Muslim Rohingya living in camps.

Bangladesh has started rebuilding 19 Buddhist temples vandalized by Muslim mobs in violence triggered by anger over Facebook content that defamed the Koran, officials said Thursday.

Army engineers will renovate the temples at a cost of nearly 120 million taka ($1.5 million) on the orders of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who recently visited the area, district administrator Ruhul Amin told Agence France Presse.

A new wave of sectarian violence in western Myanmar has left five people dead and dozens injured in recent days, triggering another exodus of Muslims to emergency camps, officials said Thursday.

Hundreds of homes have been burned in the fresh outburst of unrest in Rakhine state, where Buddhist-Muslim clashes have killed at least 95 people since June and displaced tens of thousands, according to the authorities.

Hundreds of Buddhist university students rallied Wednesday against Muslims in a flashpoint city at the center of communal tensions in western Myanmar, a protest leader told AFP.

The protest in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state, followed overnight violence in nearby towns as a fresh outbreak of unrest between ethnic Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya stretched into a third day.

Three people have been killed in a fresh outbreak of communal violence between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, a local official said Tuesday.

"We got the information that three people, an ethic Rakhine man and two Muslim women, were killed at Pandeinkone village during yesterday's (Monday's) clashes," Hla Thein, Rakhine State chief justice told AFP.

For conservative Muslim-majority Bangladesh, it is a forgotten and often shocking part of history: a time when aristocrats would openly flaunt male teenage singers whom they took as lovers.

Homosexuality remains illegal in Bangladesh, but the practice of rich Muslim landlords in rural areas publicly living with adolescent "Ghetu" males each monsoon season was widely accepted 150 years ago.

A Bangladesh court Saturday jailed 723 border guards for their role in a bloody 2009 mutiny, bringing the total number of soldiers imprisoned for the unrest to nearly 6,000, prosecutors said.

Fifty-seven senior army officers were killed during an uprising that began when soldiers at the Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR) headquarters in Dhaka went on a killing spree, later dumping victims' bodies in sewers and shallow graves.

At least 14 people were killed and an estimated 1,500 fishermen are missing after tropical storms smashed into Bangladesh's southern coastal islands and districts early Thursday, police said.

Police said at least 1,500 mud, tin and straw-built houses were also leveled in the storms that swept Bhola, Hatiya and Sandwip Islands and half a dozen coastal districts after midnight Wednesday midnight.

About 100 monks demonstrated in Myanmar's main city Yangon on Friday against attacks by Muslim mobs targeting Buddhist temples and homes in neighboring Bangladesh.

Holding signs with slogans including "The Earth Is for Everyone, Not Only for Muslims" and "Stop Insulting Buddhism", the robed monks staged a short protest outside the Bangladesh embassy in the former capital.

Bangladesh police said Tuesday they had arrested nearly 300 people after Muslim mobs attacked temples and houses in what Buddhist leaders described as the worst violence against the community since independence.

A total of 162 people were arrested in Cox's Bazaar, which bore the brunt of the attacks on Saturday and Sunday nights, according to Khorshed Alam, a senior police officer in the southeastern district.