[Al Arabiya Latest] Bangladesh tightened security on Tuesday after an outlawed Islamist group threatened to kill local staff of United Nations agencies at a district town, officials and police said on Tuesday.Identical letters, written in English and signed by the outlawed Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) command in Barisal coastal district, were sent on Monday to the local offices of UNICEF, the World Food Program and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The letters ordered the agencies' local operations to be closed and their staff withdrawn within 24 hours, one officer with a U.N office told Reuters. "Otherwise, the JMB threatened to kill our local staff," the officer said.
" We have instructed our officials to remain alert and to cooperate with police in averting the threat "Sharifa Sharmin, UNICEF spokesperson |
Police swept all the three offices with metal detectors on Tuesday.
"We have instructed our officials to remain alert and to cooperate with police in averting the threat," Sharifa Sharmin, UNICEF spokesperson in Dhaka, told Reuters.
JMB, blamed for a series of deadly bombings in late 2005, wants to turn mostly Muslim, democratic Bangladesh into a sharia-based Islamic state.
The militants have been on the back foot since the top six JMB commanders were tried and executed in 2007, but intelligence officials have said they are regrouping and may strike again.
Security forces have seized explosives and detained nearly 100 suspected militants over the last month, including a top official of a British-based Islamic non-governmental organization for allegedly funding Islamist militancy in Bangladesh.