RAB arrests five suspected militants of JMB's 'Tamim-Sarwar group' in Dhaka

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) says it has arrested five suspected militants belonging to the 'Tamim-Sarwar' faction of banned group Jama'tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 21 March 2017, 06:53 AM
Updated : 21 March 2017, 09:23 AM

RAB spokesperson Mizanur Rahman said the arrests were made on Monday during raids at different parts of Dhaka.

He did not provide the identity of those arrested, but said two of them were engineers.

Jihadi literature and bomb-making materials have been seized from them, said Rahman, an assistant director of RAB's media wing.

He added that details will be provided at a media briefing later on Tuesday.

The arrests comes within three days of a suicide blast at the force's barracks in Dhaka's Ashkona and an 'attempted assault' at a RAB checkpost in the city's Khilgaon, when two suspected militants were killed.

During a RAB raid on Oct 8 last year at building in Ashulia, a man died after falling from the fourth floor.

The elite police unit later identified him as Sarwar Jahan, who took up the alias Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif and regrouped a faction of the JMB along with Canadian-Bangladeshi Tamim Chowdhury.

Tamim and two other suspected militants were killed on Aug 27 last year during a gunfight at a militant hideout in Narayanganj.

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Security forces have been blaming this faction of the JMB behind the terrors attacks at an upscale restaurant in Dhaka's Gulshan and the Sholakia Eid congregation in Kishoreganj.

Police identifies the faction as the 'Neo-JMB' while RAB describes it as the 'Sarwar-Tamim group.'

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 checkpost in Comilla.

The same night, police's counterterrorism unit took one of them to Chittagong's Mirsharai and busted a hideout. A large amount of bombs and explosives were recovered from a house at the Upazila town.

On Thursday, a militant couple was held with explosives during a raid on a house at Amirabad in Chittagong's Sitakunda Upazila town.

Police raided another house in adjacent Premtala area the same day on information given by the couple.

The second raid ended 19 hours later through an assault which saw the deaths of two militant suspects in a suicide blast and two others shot dead. A child also died in the explosion.

On Friday, a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up at the RAB barracks in the capital's Ashkona, injuring two RAB personnel and the next day, the RAB said it foiled a possible suicide bombing at a checkpost in 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.