Dozens of small bomb blasts rattled the capital and towns across Bangladesh yesterday as a series of carefully timed attacks injured at least 42 people and sowed panic across the country, police said. Seven people were later arrested in connection with some of the bombings.
Police said the bombs, which went off almost simultaneously, were homemade and apparently designed to cause only limited damage.
But the blasts caused panic and massive traffic jams in a number of cities, as people fled for safety and rushed to schools to bring their children home.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but leaflets from a banned Islamic group, the Jumatul Mujahedin, were found at the scene of a number of explosions, police said. The group wants to establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation governed by secular laws.
"It's an organized attack," Lufuzzaman Babar, a top official in the Home Ministry, told the local TV station ATN Bangla. "It's not a simple incident."
Police made a number of quick arrests.
Three men were arrested in the southern district of Cox's Bazar for carrying or hurling bombs, said police officer Rezaul Karim. In the city of Chittagong, police arrested two men carrying crude homemade bombs and firecrackers, said police officer Osman Gani said. Two other suspects were picked up elsewhere in Chittagong, Gani said, without elaborating.
The leaflets found near a number of blast sites called for the imposition of Islamic law.
"There should not be any other laws except Allah's in a Muslim country. But it's a pity that in Bangladesh, where about 90 percent are Muslims, Allah's rules are not implemented," said the leaflets, which were written in Bengali and Arabic.
Earlier this year, the government outlawed Jumatul Mujahedin and another Islamic group, Jagrata Muslim Janata, for their alleged involvement in a spate killings, robberies and bomb attacks in Bangladesh in recent years.
The groups have denied involvement in the violence, but have vowed to work to establish Islamic rule in this nation of 140 million people.
In Dhaka, police were deployed to major intersections after the explosions, and were checking vehicles and pedestrians for bombs.
Police who examined a number of unexploded bombs said they contained explosives packed in small containers and wrapped in tape, paper or sawdust -- instead of the nails or shrapnel that more deadly bombs contain. They were rigged with small battery-powered timers, police said.
"They were meant to create sound and panic rather than serious injury," a police official told ATN Bangla.
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