Manhunt for Islamic militant leaders called off

Police failed to find the leaders, Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam and the operation in the Kushtia district was suspended.

Bangladesh's biggest ever manhunt for two Islamic militant leaders wanted for a string of deadly bomb blasts has been called off, officials said on Friday.

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Police failed to find the leaders, Shaikh Abdur Rahman and Siddiqul Islam, alias Bangla Bhai, and the operation in the western Kushtia district was suspended late on Thursday. Ten suspected members of the leaders' militant groups were arrested during the hunt.

"We had the information that Bangla Bhai and Shaikh Abdur Rahman were in that place but unluckily they managed to escape us," district intelligence officer Altafur Rahman told the agency.

Jamayetul Mujahideen, a group led by Rahman, an Afghan war veteran, has been blamed for more than 400 synchronised blasts across Bangladesh on August 17 and a series of subsequent bombings, including several suicide attacks. A total of 28 people have died including four suicide bombers.

Leaflets left at blast sites and bearing the name of the group called for the imposition of strict Islamic law in the mainly Muslim but secular nation.

Siddiqul Islam leads a sister outfit called Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, believed to have been responsible for a series of earlier blasts.

Both groups were banned by the government last February.

Following a tip-off, some 2,000 police, paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles and the Rapid Action Battalion security forces swooped on Thursday on villages in helicopters, police said.

Security personnel cordoned off a five-kilometre (three-mile) area and conducted door-to-door searches.