Bangladesh busts militants' den, captures two

Dhaka - Bangladesh's elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Friday raided a hideout of Islamist militants in downtown Dhaka and seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition, police said. In a pre-down raid on an apartment at Munipuripara, near the parliament complex, the members of the battalion captured Jahedur Rahman, also known as Mizan, one of the top militant suspects belonging to outlawed Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), they said. Mizan is the main explosives expert of the banned outfit, said Abul Kalam Azad, the director of the battalion, which also detained the wife of the suspected Islamist militant for interrogation. Acting on intelligence information, the battalion members unearth another bomb factory at a nearby five-story residential apartment, where the extremists amassed huge amounts of arms and ammunitions. A room on the third floor in the house was found to be storing large quantities of bomb-making equipment and grenade casings, fuses, detonators, plastic explosives and chemicals, Hasan Mahmud Khandaker, the director general of the RAB, told a press conference after the operation. The material that his forces seized from the two houses were enough to manufacture 1,000 bombs, he said, adding that the militants amassed the equipment and chemicals which is used in manufacturing land-mine and anti-personnel mine. Books related to Jihad and Islam were also found in the apartments. The members of the banned Islamist outfit, which has been campaigning for sharia law in Bangladesh, have recently started regrouping across the country after six of its top leaders were hanged in early 2007 for their involvement in a number of terrorists attacks. Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh was held responsible for most of the attacks, mainly targeting cultural programmes, courts and public places during the last decade. Bangladesh's Awami League-led alliance government of Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month formed a high- profile committee, headed by a minister, to check militancy and to launch a social movement against terrorism.