DHAKA, March 15 (Xinhua) -- A police officer was injured Wednesday when militants hurled grenades at the law enforcers during a raid at a suspected hideout of a banned militant outfit in Bangladesh, a police official said.
The incident happened in Chittagong city, some 242 km southeast of capital Dhaka, when police raided the hideout of Neo JMB (Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh), an Islamic terrorist organization.
Nure Alam Mina, superintendent of police in Chittagong, told journalists that an inspector of Chittagong's Sitakunda Police Station sustained splinter injuries as militants hurled "four grenades" at the law enforcers.
Neo-JMB (an offshoot of the banned militant outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh) is blamed for last July's attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka's diplomatic quarter in which 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, were killed.
Alam said a team of of Chittagong police cordoned off two buildings in Chittagong's Premtala area at around 3:00 p.m. local time suspecting presence of militants there.
He said a husband and wife along with a child were arrested from one of the buildings which have been sealed-off on information that they were used as hideouts by militants of the Neo JMB.
Since the cafe attack Bangladesh law enforcers apparently have gone tough against neo-JMB.
Tamim Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi-Canadian, and Sarwar Jahan, identified as Neo JMB chief who was killed during a raid on Oct. 8 last year, have been blamed as the mastermind of the brutal attack on the Spanish cafe. Chowdhury was also killed in a police raid in August last year.
JMB carried out a series of bombings in 63 out of the country's 64 districts, including capital Dhaka on Aug. 17, 2005, leaving two people dead and 150 others injured. Hundreds of JMB leaders and activists were rounded up while six top leaders of the group, including Shaikh Abdur Rahman, were hanged in 2007.
