DHAKA, 18 September 2005 — A student leader was shot dead and another was seriously injured in a shootout here yesterday, sources said.
Unidentified gunmen fatally shot Ariful Islam, a leader of the student wing of Bangladesh’s ruling party.
Arif led the student wing of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party at Suhrawardy College in the capital, Dhaka, where he was killed, sources said.
Another member of the group, Shakil Ahmed Faisal, was seriously injured in the shooting, the agency said.
It said Arif was fired upon by a group of six gunmen on motorbikes, who then fled the scene. No other details were immediately available. Police arrived at the college, but have so far made no arrests, the report said. Officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, police in northwestern Bangladesh arrested two more suspects in last month’s bomb attacks that killed two people and injured 125 others, an official said yesterday. The two men were arrested late Friday at a house in Rajshahi district, 230 km northwest of Dhaka, a police official said. The two allegedly belong to Jamatul Mujahedeen, a banned group that seeks to establish Islamic rule in Bangladesh, the official said.
Police raided a remote village and seized explosives and detonators from members of the group blamed for last month’s nationwide wave of blasts, officials said yesterday.
“We found a huge amount of explosives and detonators enough to make 64 bombs from two Jamatul Mujahedeen members,” Abdulllah Al Mahmud, superintendent of police in western Rajshahi district, said.
