DHAKA: Bangladeshi security forces said on Wednesday they had arrested three lawyers practicing at the Supreme Court in connection with funding for an Islamist group to buy weapons.

Miftah Uddin Ahmed, the head of the Rapid Action Battalion in the Chittagong region, told Reuters that the lawyers had given 10 million taka ($13,000) to the newly formed Shaheed Hamza Brigade.

Ahmed said the trio were arrested overnight in the capital, Dhaka. It was not immediately clear what led to the arrests.

In April, several brigade members were arrested in the port city of Chittagong.

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, while the government has tried to crack down on hard-line Islamist groups seeking to make the South Asian nation of 160 million people a sharia-based state.

Three suspected Islamist militants, including a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin, were arrested this week for masterminding the killings of two secular bloggers.

The Shaheed Hamza Brigade was founded by students of a madrassa, or Islamic school, in Chittagong with the aim of armed revolution against the oppression of Muslims around the world, the Rapid Action Battalion has said.

(Reporting by Ruma Paul)