Bangla: Militant arrested, 4 killed in encounter

Dhaka, Mar 13: A top Jama'tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militant was today (Mar 13, 2006) arrested from his hideout in eastern Comilla town, about 150 km from here, following an encounter with security forces that left four people dead.

Director of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) media wing Commodore Mashuk told reporters, Nabil, son of JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, was arrested with severe injuries as he along with his associates tried to blow up themselves with high powered bombs to avoid the arrest. The militants were hiding in a house at Kaliajuri in the town.

During the encounter that took place at around 1145 hrs (BST), one militant Molla Omar and two women and one minor were killed. Molla was JMB's bomb-making expert, the RAB official said.

Besides, four RAB members sustained injuries when the militants hurled bombs on them from the hideout.

Earlier, RAB captured JMB chief from Sylhet town on March 2 and his second-in-command Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai on March 6 from a hideout in northern Mymensingh.

Shaikh Rahman confessed to interrogators that he had ordered to stage serial bombings in the country's 63 districts on August 17 and subsequent suicide attacks that left nearly 40 people, including judges, lawyers and police, dead and several hundred injured.

The outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Bangla Bhai's group Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh are fighting for the introduction of sharia law in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy.

They killed at least 30 people and wounded 150 in countrywide bomb attacks since August 17 last year.

UNI