DHAKA: A man blew himself up on Friday at a camp for Bangladesh’s elite security forces, wounding two others, in an apparent botched suicide attack.
The incident came a day after a series of raids on suspected militant hideouts in the troubled country, which has suffered a series of militant attacks in recent years. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said a man carrying explosives entered the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) camp near the Dhaka international airport on Friday morning. The explosives went off after he was challenged by two RAB men, wounding them both but causing no other casualties. RAB spokesperson Mufti Mahmud Khan told reporters the bomb exploded after the man was confronted by RAB men, although it was not clear whether the detonation was deliberate.
The spokesperson said the man’s identity was not known, but that the attack was similar in style to that of previous ones by extremists.
The camp, which hosts a mix of elite police, army and air force personnel, has since been cordoned off.
Bangladeshi security forces launched a nationwide crackdown on extremists following a deadly siege at a cafe in Dhaka last year, arresting scores.
The drive was led by the RAB, which is tasked with tackling militancy and serious crimes in Bangladesh.
Four alleged militants were killed on Thursday when a raid on a building in the southern port city of Chittagong sparked a 15-hour stand-off with militants armed with guns and grenades.
Police said they were all members of the extremist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and that at least two were killed by a suicide explosion that they set off.
Last year’s attack on the Holey Bakery, a cafe popular with foreigners, badly undermined Bangladesh’s reputation as a relatively moderate Muslim nation. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which 22 people including 18 foreign hostages were killed in July. – AFP
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