Police arrest 5 suspected JMB operatives with explosives in Dhaka

Police have arrested five suspected operatives of the banned militant group Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) with explosives from Dhaka’s Darussalam.

DMP Additional Deputy Commissioner Md Yusuf Ali said the counter-terrorism unit of the police nabbed the five on Thursday night from near the Technical intersection.

 

He did not identify the arrestees, but said they were members of what he called the ‘Neo-JMB’.

 

The Rajshahi-based JMB, which had first made the headlines during the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami alliance’s regime, was proscribed in February 2005.

 

But it stole the spotlight by becoming a larger threat when it carried out synchronised bomb explosions in 63 districts throughout Bangladesh in August that year.

 

Since then, the law-enforcing agencies had cornered the militant organisation. But they say the terror outfit reorganised in the past two years and has been carrying out attacks and murders.

 

Police officials call this reorganised JMB the ‘Neo-JMB’. They have also blamed its operatives for the Jul 1 attack on a Gulshan cafe and the Jul 7 attack at Sholakia in Kishoreganj.

 

On Jul 26, nine militants were killed in a special raid by the security forces at a house in Kalyanpur. Police said the dead men were JMB members too.

 

Additional DC Yusuf Ali said the media would be briefed on the latest arrests later in the day.