B'desh police probe al Qaeda link to railway bombs

DHAKA, May 2 (Reuters) Commuters flooded back to Bangladesh railway stations today, a day after simultaneous bomb blasts rocked three terminals and raised a security alarm across the country.

Police said they believed the blasts in Dhaka, the port city of Chittagong and northeastern Sylhet, which slightly injured a rickshaw puller, were not intended to kill anybody but to announce the presence of an Islamist group in the country.

''All security agencies, including the Rapid Action Battalion, have stepped up vigilance and are looking for the militants,'' Hassan Mahmood Khandker, director-general of the RAB elite force, told a news conference.

''We are trying to find out ... if they are from previously known groups or a new entity seeking to destabilise the country or just trying to draw public attention.'' Two metal sheets found at the bomb sites in Dhaka and Sylhet city were scribbled with militant slogans. One sheet was signed ''al Qaeda network'' while the other was signed ''Zadid (new) al Qaeda'', police said.

In the slogans, written in the Bangla language, the militants threatened to blow up non-governmental organisations unless they pronounced Prophet Hazrat Mohammad as the ''world's superman'' and also warned the small Ahmadiyya Muslim sect of similar consequences.

The Ahmadiyyas refuse to accept the Prophet Mohammad as Islam's final prophet, contrary to beliefs of the majority Sunni Muslims, and claim their founder to be a prophet and messiah.

''We are investigating, but have no immediate clue to confirm that the blasts had any link whatsoever with the al Qaeda,'' a police detective said. ''But we are trying to dig deeper for more details.'' RAB chief Khandker said the materials used in the terminal blasts were ''improvised locally'', but did not elaborate.

CRACKDOWN ON ISLAMISTS Former prime ministers Begum Khaleda Zia and her rival Sheikh Hasina condemned the railway blasts and urged the authorities to arrest the perpetrators, leaders of their parties said.

Khaleda's government, which ended its five-year term in October, had launched a crackdown on the Islamists responsible for countrywide bomb attacks in 2005 that killed at least 30 people and wounded 150.

Hasina escaped unhurt from a grenade attack by suspected Islamists at a rally she was addressing in Dhaka in August 2004, in which 23 leaders and workers of her Awami League were killed and more than 150 wounded.

Both Khaleda, chief of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and Hasina are currently being targeted by the country's interim government in an anti-corruption campaign.

Hasina is waiting to return home from a holiday in the United States to face charges of extortion and murder linked to political violence that erupted last October. She denies the allegations.

Khaleda remains under tight surveillance by security forces at her home, her associates say.

Security has been tightened across the country following yesterday's blast.

A traffic officer at Dhaka's Kamalapur terminal said on Wednesday: ''We are having normal business here today, with people streaming in and out of trains.'' Intelligence officials had earlier told authorities that Islamist militants were regrouping under different names after six militant leaders were hanged in March.

The six included Shayek Abdur Rahman and Siddikul Islam Bangla Bhai, who led the outlawed groups Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, respectively.

Both groups pursued a common goal -- to introduce sharia, or Islamic law, in mainly Muslim Bangladesh.

Their followers had kept a low profile after the country's army-backed interim government imposed a state of emergency in January and cancelled scheduled elections. The six Islamists were executed following trial by special courts.

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