The suspects, who were seized in the overnight operation, were living in two houses in a plush area of Mombasa, heavily guarded by private security.

Foreign Minister Morshed Khan said yesterday the government asked the Bangladesh mission in Kenya to update the foreign ministry immediately on the incident. They might be fortune-seekers and had gone there through fake travel agencies, he observed.

Meanwhile, local deputy police chief John Mbijjiwe told AFP in Nairobi by phone, "We have confirmed that they are all Bangladesh nationals and there is no single Pakistani as earlier thought."

"We are now pursuing three lines in our investigations: whether they are linked to terrorism activities, drugs or human trafficking," he said.

Mbijjiwe refused to disclose where the men were detained, but witnesses said they were in the city's Port Police Station.

Mbijjiwe said officers found mattresses but no beds and a few bags of rice in the houses where the men were staying in Mombasa's upmarket estate of Nyali. They also found two computers and pornographic magazines.

"None of them could speak English. We were communicating using sign language," he added.

A Kenyan caretaker of the house, Ali Masudi, was also arrested, Mbijjiwe said.

Police said trafficking in drugs and people are rampant in the east African nation, notably in the coastal region.

In November 2002, a vehicle packed with explosives was rammed into the lobby of an Israeli-owned Mombasa hotel, killing 15 people and three presumed suicide bombers.

In August 1998, two car bombs went off almost simultaneously outside the embassies of the United States in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in neighbouring Tanzania.

The attacks killed 224 people and injured around 5,000, almost all of them Africans.

Both attacks were claimed by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.