Police in Bangladesh hunting for Islamist suicide bombers have seized explosives and detained 30 militants, a home ministry official said yesterday.
"Some 22kg of explosives including gunpowder, gel, iron chips and other bomb making materials were recovered from a hideout in northern Tangail late on Friday," the official said.
Police raided the hideout, on a remote fish farm 100km northwest of the capital Dhaka, after a tip-off.
Three militants were detained during the raid on the hideout and 27 others were picked up from different spots, where a number of live bombs were also recovered over the last 24 hours.
Most of the detainees are believed to be militants of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, one of the three banned groups, blamed for waves of bomb attacks across the country since August.
Police have intensified their hunt for bombers after two bombs exploded on a crowded street in the northern town of Netrokona on Thursday, killing eight people including a suicide bomber and wounding 50.
The latest bomb attack took the number of people killed by suspected suicide bombers to 28 in three weeks, including judges, lawyers and policemen. At least 150 people have been wounded.
State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar said last month that Islamists had formed a 2,000-strong suicide squad to press home their demands for a Shariah-based Islamic state.
No one is sure if the militants keep ties to al-Qaeda or other international terror networks. Some say they do get foreign help, and many Bangladeshis think the kind of insurgency plaguing other countries is now developing at home.
"What's going on here? Are we making another Iraq or Afghanistan?" asked Farhad Hassan, a student in Dhaka, who saw on television the carnage caused by the attack in Netrokona.
Bangladeshi media have said that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's leaders, Maulana Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam -- known as Bangla Bhai -- have aides who fought the Soviets with the Taliban and future al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Officials say they're investigating the reports.
Senior officials still haven't publicly singled out Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen. However, their statement on the bombings are growing stronger.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said those responsible would "be silenced with all our might."
"Those who have carried out the [Thursday] attack have thrown a challenge for us," said Babar. "But we shall capture them."
Thursday's attack also marked a change in Bangladesh's bombing wave, previously aimed at government offices and courts.
Militants "are now targeting innocent people, adding a new dimension to the to the attacks," said senior home ministry official Mohammad Mohsion.
The latest attack appeared aimed at a cultural group which recently held an anti-militant concert. The first bomb, safely detonated by the police, was found outside the group's offices, and the subsequent suicide blast killed one its members.
Bangladesh is the world's third most populous Islamic country after Indonesia and Pakistan.
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