Bangladesh blasts kill four

DHAKA: Two explosions ripped through a crowd on Saturday, killing four people and injuring more than 40 in Bangladesh’s northeastern city of Sylhet where army commandos stormed an extremist hideout, police said.

The ‘powerful’ blasts went off some 400 yards from the hideout, targeting police and hundreds of onlookers who were witnessing the commandos conducting an anti-militant operation at a five-storey apartment building, police said.

“At least four people including a policeman were killed,” Sylhet police spokesman Zedan Al Musa told AFP, adding 42 people including about a dozen police and security officers were injured.



“Conditions of several people are critical,” Atiqul Islam, an emergency doctor at Sylhet Medical College Hospital told AFP.

Musa said police primarily suspect a new faction of the homegrown extremist group, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has been blamed for a wave of attacks in recent years.

Police could not confirm whether it was a suicide blast. “It occurred in the dark when there was no electricity,” Musa said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2017.