Briefing journalists, Director General of External Publicity Zahirul Haque said the foreign minister requested the envoy to make his regret in a formal way.

During the call on, the foreign minister repeated his statement made in parliament on Sunday on the matter.

Morshed told the Danish envoy that the cartoons have deeply hurt the religious sentiment of the people of Bangladesh and requested him to convey the sentiment to his government.

"The Danish government needs to take necessary steps to stop recurrence of such heinous act," Haque quoted Morshed as telling the envoy.

Meanwhile, security measures have been beefed up at the Royal Danish Embassy in Dhaka in the wake of attacks at Denmark embassies in Lebanon and Syria.

Additional policemen were deployed to ensure security of the embassy since Sunday while a platoon of police was kept standby as striking force, a senior police official told the news agency yesterday.

Some Islamist groups, including the Hizbut Tahrir, have declared to lay a siege to the Danish embassy on Friday.