Bangladesh has banned broadcasting of a Dubai-based Islamic television channel, a minister said today, following a report that the channel's preachings of Islam had inspired a recent terrorist attack that left 22 dead. 

The private channel, founded by controversial Indian televangelist Zakir Naik, was said to have inspired some of the terrorists who launched the attack on a restaurant in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on July 1, according to an intelligence report cited by local media. 

"We will take administrative steps to ban Peace TV on Monday," Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu told reporters after a special counter-terrorism meeting in Dhaka. 

The multi-lingual broadcaster launched its Bengali service in 2011 in an effort to reach Bangla-speaking viewers around the world and had appeared to have gained popularity in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. 

Media reports said one of the five slain terrorists, who stormed the Dhaka restaurant in an attack on foreign civilians, was a follower of controversial Naik on social media. 

Naik was denied entry in Britain in 2010 after the British authorities said the preacher had made a number of statements supporting terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden, according to The Guardian newspaper. 

Authorities at the Bangladeshi counter-terrorism meeting attended by top security officials also decided to monitor sermons given during Friday prayers to check whether any provocative lectures are delivered, said Amir Hossain Amu, head of the cabinet committee on law and order.

- dpa