DHAKA: Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested nearly 150 suspected militants and more than 11,000 others as part of a crackdown on extremism after a wave of brutal killings, CNN news reported on Wednesday.
Police said they detained 145 suspected militants over four days of raids and that the rest were accused of everything from theft and drug dealing to violence.
An officially secular but Muslim-majority nation, Bangladesh has seen a surge of targeted killings – blamed on, militants – that have claimed the lives of secularists, religious minorities and gay activists.
Police have said that most of the suspected militants were members of Jama’atul Mujahedin Bangladesh, a banned militant group.
However, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said the raids were designed to detain its leaders and workers.
It said some 2,100 party leaders and activists were arrested.
The JMB also has been blamed for bomb attacks, and members of the group were detained in relation to the recent killing of a Hindu priest.
Last week, the wife of a senior police officer who had led high-profile operations against the group was stabbed and shot to death while taking her to son to catch his school bus.
Police seized arms, ammunition, other lethal weapons and more than 2,000 motorbikes during this week’s raids.
US ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat said there have been at least 35 such attacks carried out over 14 months, with a militant terror group claiming responsibility for 23.
The government has been criticised for not doing more to respond to the killings.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that she wanted to bring all the perpetrators to justice over the weekend.
“Where will the criminals hide? Each and every killer would be brought to book as we have done after 2015 mayhem,” Hasina said.
The Bangladeshi government accuses the opposition BNP and militant fundamentalist groups for the attacks.
“All terror in Bangladesh for the last four years, the answer is very simple,” Bangladeshi Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu said in a recent interview.
“The producer is BNP, the director is Jamaat e Islami, and the small actors on the ground are variants of ABT (Ansarullah Bangla Team), JMB, and certain other militant networks,” he said.