Bangladesh arrests four Islamists, seizes explosives

DHAKA, Aug 2 (Reuters) Bangladesh security forces arrested four suspected members of a banned Islamic militant group from a house in the capital today and seized a 10-kg (22 lb) bomb and four grenades, an official said.

The militants belonged to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, one of the underground groups fighting for introduction of strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy.

The raid was carried out by a team of the elite Rapid Action Battalion on a house in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, an official said.

''The captured militants have confessed they were members of the Jamaat-ul Mujahideen,'' the official said.

The Islamist organisations, blamed for a wave of bombings in 2005, were trying to regroup after six top leaders were hanged in March following their conviction for those attacks, intelligence officers said.

Last month security forces arrested four militants with three kg of powdered explosives and 15 grenades from Kishorganj in northern Bangladesh.

REUTERS PD HT1904