Trading in Bangladesh's main bourse -- the Dhaka Stock Exchange -- in Dhaka was suspended for nearly an hour on Monday following a bomb threat in the afternoon, officials said.

"Someone has made a phone call to the Dhaka Stocks Exchange office at around 11:00 a.m. local time on Monday and said there was a bomb in the building that would explode at around 2:00 p.m.," Officer-in-Charge of the Motijheel police station in Dhaka Syed Selim Sazzad told Xinhua.

Amid such a situation, "We halted transactions at around 1:15 p.m., nearly one hour before the scheduled time 2 p.m. following the threat," spokesman of the DSE Bazlur Rahman said.

The joint bomb squad of elite-force Rapid Action Battalion and Detective Branch of Bangladesh Police then conducted a sweep on the eight-storied DSE building.

DSE spokesman Rahman said searching has been completed and there was no explosive.

He said beefed up security measures have been ensured to check any unpleasant incident and trading will be started at the scheduled time at 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

However, the Dhaka Stock Exchange All Shares Price Index (DSI),the benchmark index, closed at 2,469.24 points on Monday, up 3.30 points or 0.14 percent from Sunday's finish.

Of the total 251 issues traded, 144 registered gains while 103 incurred losses and 4 remained unchanged. The total turnover came down to around 6.86 billion taka (about 97.37 million U.S. dollars)on Monday from around 7.75 billion taka (about 110.74 million U.S. dollars) on Sunday.

Source: Xinhua