Grenade blast at Bangladesh police station injures 10
20 Feb 2009 14:21:59 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds arrests, RAB chief's comment) By Ruma Paul DHAKA, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A member of a gang of militants being paraded with captured weapons by police at a news conference on Friday managed to grab and detonate a grenade, injuring at least 10 people. Police and witnesses said one of four militants that police pressented to journalists grabbed a grenade on display at Gazipur, 30 km (20 miles) north of the capital. "At least 10 policemen and reporters have been injured," one witness told Reuters by telephone. Bangladesh police routinely hold news conferences where they display captured criminals and evidence. The four militants, including three women, had earlier confessed to being members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, an outlawed Islamist group accused of carrying out a series of bomb attacks across the country since 2005. Police also seized from a hideout used by the group live grenades, bombs, and explosives, which had been put on display at the news conference. "But suddenly the male member of the group jumped on the table where the devices were kept, grabbed one and set it off," one police officer said. During interrogation the group told police they were preparing to launch attacks during a language anniversary celebration on Saturday. Separately, Hasan Mahmood Khandker, chief of the Rapid Action Battalion elite force, told Reuters they detained a JMB commander and several accomplices from another hideout at Konabari, also near the capital, on Friday and seized live grenades and explosives from him. Police and RAB members have arrested around 150 suspected militants in a countrywide hunt over the past few days, trying to secure Saturday's anniversary. The February 21 anniversary marks the killing of several students and others by police for demanding Bengali to be made a state language in what was then East Pakistan. In 1999, the UNESCO designated the anniversary as the International Mother Language Day. "We have set up a three-layer fool-proof security arrangement for the anniversary," police commissioner Mohammad Nayeem told reporters late on Thursday. In late 2005, the JMB and allied groups, trying to turn Muslim Bangladesh into a sharia-based Islamic state, killed more than 30 people and injured over 150 in a spate of bombings across the country. Their campaign suffered a blow after six JMB top commanders were hanged in March 2007, but police and intelligence officials warned their followers were regrouping and might launch fresh attacks. (Writing by Anis Ahmed; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Mohammad Iqbal Hossain's mother Asma Khatoon cries for her son at Fadanardal near Cox's Bazar, January 30, 2009. Iqbal was one of a 250-strong group of stateless Rohingya who left Bangladesh ...
