RAB starts anti-terror case over Ashkona base suicide explosion in Dhaka

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has filed an anti-terror case over Friday's suicide attacks at a temporary base in Dhaka, where its future headquarters are being constructed.

Dhaka's Airport Police Station OC Nure Azam told bdnews24.com on Saturday that a RAB officer lodged the case with them.

"Seven to eight unidentified persons have been accused in the case filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act," he said.

After the raids on militant hideouts at Chittagong's Sitakunda, a suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday at the RAB barracks in the capital's Ashkona, injuring two RAB personnel.

Within 24 hours of the attack, RAB foiled another possible suicide bombing early on Saturday at one of their check-posts at Dhaka's Khilgaon, killing the suspected attacker.

Intelligence officials said the two successive attacks were worrying because it pointed to the 'continued existence' of a terrorist command structure directing the suicide attacks.

Amid security forces' crackdown on militancy following the Gulshan and Sholakia terror attacks in July last year, the militants had appeared weakened, but recent incidents suggested that they were re-grouping and a leadership was in charge.

On Mar 6, a prison van carrying death-row convict Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) leader Mufti Hannan from court to Gazipur's Kashimpur prison came under a bomb attack, in what the police say was an attempt to snatch the militant leader.

The next day, two suspected members of Neo-JMB were nabbed after they hurled bombs on policemen at a highway check-post in Comilla.

Police's counterterrorism unit took one of them to Chittagong's Mirsharai the same day and busted a hideout. A large amount of bombs and explosives were recovered.

On Thursday, police raided a terror den in Chittagong's Sitakunda when two militant suspects died in a suicide blast and two others shot dead. An infant was also found dead inside the house where militants were holed up for almost 19 hours.

The raid followed after a militant couple was caught with explosives during a raid on Wednesday on another house at the Sitakunda Upazila town.