Eid al-Fitr festival celebrated in Bangladesh

Eid-ul-Fits prayer being offered at the National Eidgah in Dhaka on Saturday. UNB

DHAKA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr with religious fervour and gaiety on Saturday, with worshippers shaking hands and doing the customary hugging after the prayers.

Since Saturday morning, Muslims in capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country flocked to open places and masjids to offer special prayers of the Eid, which marks the end of the month-long fasting in the holy month of Ramadan.

The main Eid congregation in Dhaka was held at the national Eidgah (an open ground for Eid prayers) in the Bangladesh Supreme Court compound.

Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, among other dignitaries, participated in the prayer.

Long lines of worshippers had also been seen since morning in front of Dhaka's many masjids, including the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque where five congregations were held in quick succession to facilitate the prayers by a large number of devotees who collected at the national mosque.

Like previous years, the country's largest Eid congregation was held at Sholakia in Kishoreganj district, some 117 km northeast of Dhaka, with hundreds of thousands of participants offering prayers.