DHAKA: Bangladesh police shot and killed a suspected militant who tried to enter a security checkpost on a motorcycle armed with explosives on Saturday, the latest in a string of security incidents since a deadly attack on a cafe in July.
The latest incident came a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a security forces base near the international airport in the South Asian nation’s capital, Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said some of its officers opened fire when a man riding a motorcycle tried to break through a checkpost.
“The man was carrying explosives on his body,” the RAB’s Legal and Media wing chief Mufti Mahmud Khan told Reuters. He said two officers were wounded in the attack.
Bangladesh has stepped up security at all airports and prisons across the country after Friday’s suicide attack. The most serious in a string of attacks in recent years came last July, when gunmen stormed a Dhaka cafe and killed 22 people, most of them foreigners.
On Thursday, four suspected members of an Islamist militant group blamed for the cafe attack were killed during a police raid on their hideout in the southeastern town of Chittagong.
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group have made competing claims over a recent spate of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in Bangladesh, a mostly Muslim country of 160 million people.
Authorities have consistently ruled out the presence of such transnational groups, blaming domestic militants instead. However, security experts say the scale and sophistication of the cafe attack suggested links to a transnational network.
Police have killed more than 50 suspected militants in shootouts since the cafe attack, including the man they say was its main planner, Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury.
(Reporting by Ruma Paul)
Bangladesh police shoot militant armed with explosives
Bangladesh police shoot militant armed with explosives
Immigration agents draw guns, arrest activists following them in Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS: Immigration officers with guns drawn arrested some activists who were trailing their vehicles on Tuesday in Minneapolis, a sign that tensions have not eased since the departure last week of a high-profile commander.
At least one person who had an anti-ICE message on clothing was handcuffed while face-down on the ground. An Associated Press photographer witnessed the arrests.
Meanwhile, Tuesday was the deadline for the Minnesota governor, state attorney general and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul to produce documents to a federal grand jury in response to a Justice Department request for records of any effort to stifle the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Officials have denounced it as a bullying tactic.
Federal agents in the Twin Cities lately have been conducting more targeted immigration arrests at homes and neighborhoods, rather than staging in parking lots. The convoys have been harder to find and less aggressive. Alerts in activist group chats have been more about sightings than immigration-related detainments.
Several cars followed officers through south Minneapolis after there were reports of them knocking at homes. Officers stopped their vehicles and ordered activists to come out of a car at gunpoint. Agents told reporters at the scene to stay back and threatened to use pepper spray.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A federal judge last month put limits on how officers treat motorists who are following them but not obstructing their operations. Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the judge said. An appeals court, however, set the order aside.
Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who was leading an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other big US cities, left town last week, shortly after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the second local killing of a US citizen in January.
Trump administration border czar Tom Homan was dispatched to Minnesota instead. He warned that protesters could face consequences if they interfere with officers.
Grand jury seeks communications, records
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s office said it was complying with a grand jury subpoena requesting documents about the city’s response to Operation Metro Surge, but it released no other details.
“We have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, but when the federal government weaponizes the criminal justice system against political opponents, it’s important to stand up and fight back,” spokesperson Ally Peters said.
Other state and local offices run by Democrats were given similar requests. People familiar with the matter have told the AP that the subpoenas are related to an investigation into whether Minnesota officials obstructed enforcement through public statements.
No bond for man in Omar incident
Elsewhere, a man charged with squirting apple cider vinegar on Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar will remain in jail. US Magistrate Judge David Schultz granted a federal prosecutor’s request to deny bond to Anthony Kazmierczak.
“We simply cannot have protesters and people — whatever side of the aisle they’re on — running up to representatives who are conducting official business, and holding town halls, and assaulting them,” Assistant US Attorney Benjamin Bejar said Tuesday.
Defense attorney John Fossum said the vinegar posed a low risk to Omar. He said Kazmierczak’s health problems weren’t being properly addressed in jail and that his release would be appropriate.
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Raza reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. AP reporters Ed White in Detroit and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed.
