Militant hideout busted in western Bangladesh

A team of Bangladesh police Friday busted a terrorist hideout and recovered large quantity of arms and ammunition in the country's Jhenidah district, some 178 km west of capital Dhaka.

An official of Bangladesh's Counter-Terrorism Police Unit told Xinhua that the law enforcers had surrounded a building since Friday afternoon suspecting presence of militants there.

There is a huge stash of arms and explosives including suicidal vests and pressure-cooker bomb and bomb making materials, said the official who did not like to be named.

"We now think there is no militant inside the building."

Law enforcers from Dhaka have already reached the spot to boost local police efforts to recover the arms and ammunition, he said.

No further details were immediately available.

Security has been tightened in Bangladesh since militants attacked a Spanish cafe in Dhaka's Gulshan on July 1 last year, killing 22 people, mostly foreigners.

Since the cafe attack, Bangladeshi law enforcers apparently have gone tough against Neo-JMB (an offshoot of the banned militant outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh) which is blamed for the attack.

Last month Bangladeshi police conducted series of large-scale operations against militants in which at least 17 suspected militants were killed.

Six people, including two police officers, were killed last month in two explosions near a militant hideout in northeastern Bangladesh. Endit