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).
RAB spokesperson Mizanur Rahman said the arrests were made on Monday during raids at different parts of Dhaka.
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, leaving the suspected bomber dead and an ‘attempted assault’ at a RAB checkpost in the city’s Khilgaon, when the suspected attacker was shot dead.
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 Shayakh 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.
Security forces have been blaming this faction of the JMB behind the terrors attacks at upscale restaurant in Dhaka’s Gulshan and Sholakia Eid congregation.
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 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.
