Bangladesh police on alert after blast, militant arrests

DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh have been put on alert after a blast this week which killed two policemen and the arrests of alleged Islamic militants armed with explosives, newspapers and police said Thursday.

“Police have been put on alert so that there are no repeats of past incidents,” a senior officer in Dhaka said, without confirming that it was directly related to Tuesday’s bomb blast in the southwestern city of Khulna.

But newspapers, including the mass-circulation Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo, reported Thursday that the alert was due to the bomb attack in Khulna which left two policemen dead and two others injured.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast in a crowded part of Khulna, 136 kilometres (85 miles) from the capital Dhaka, but police have rounded up at least 211 suspects. The blast came about a week after a police officer was killed in a similar bomb attack near an international trade fair in the city. A bomb attack on Friday outside a mosque near Khulna left four people injured.

For the past few days police in Dhaka and other major cities have been checking vehicles and people entering cinemas or major markets.

Meanwhile, five members of the Shahdat-e-Al Hiqma, a previously unknown militant group, have been arrested in recent days in the western city of Rajshahi, police said. Five members of another militant group, Jama’atul Mujaheedin, were detained in Chapainawabganj district and bombs and explosives were seized from their hideout, police said.

“The incident may not be isolated from the sensational bomb incidents in different parts of country as the recovered bombs and explosives are almost similar,” Nawsher Ali, police chief of the frontier district, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

“We are investigating the matter to know their motive.”

Recent attacks included a series of bombs at cinema halls in western Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district in December which killed 18 people. —AFP

Bangladesh will not accept jihadis

DHAKA: Maulana Azizul Haque, leader of a pro-Islamic ruling party of Bangladesh, told journalists on Wednesday that terrorism in the name of religion would not be tolerated.

“We are an Islamic movement,” said Maulana Haque. “We will not tolerate terrorism in the name of Islam.”The general secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Ali Ahsan Mujahid, seconded him. “These are planned conspiracies against the government from across the border,” said he. The pro-Islamic four-party coalition government of the country also decided in a crucial meeting to launch a campaign against the opposition’s anti-government “propaganda”. However, the meeting did not discuss certain pressing issues like the infiltration of illegal Muslim migrants from India, Indo-Bangladesh ties, the country’s inclusion in US terrorism-related risk list and the rise of Islamic extremist organisations. The coalition partners decided to form a liaison committee, which will be headed by the leader of the right wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. —Saleem Samad

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