Terror attack on police in Bangladesh leaves one dead, 2 injured

A policeman was killed and two others were injured as militants of a banned Islamic militant group -- Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) -- launched attack on the law enforcers to snatch away three top radicals in the country's Mymensingh district, 122 km north of capital Dhaka. Firoz Talukder, officer-in-charge of a police station in Mymensigh, told Xinhua that "Constable Atiqul Islam died on the spot." He said a van, which was carrying the convicts from a prison in central Gazipur district, some 37 km away of capital Dhaka, to a court in Mymensingh, was bombed. "Two injured policemen were rushed to hospital." According to the police, two of the dangerous JMB men who were freed during the daring attack were on death row while another was sentenced to life imprisonment. Six leaders of the Islamic militant group were hanged early Friday by the Bangladeshi government for killing two judges in 2005. Among them were JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman, an Afghan war veteran, and his second-in-command Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai. The JMB militants killed two judges in southern Jhalkathi town in November 2005. The group made the headlines after they exploded nearly 500 bombs almost simultaneously on Aug. 17, 2005 across Bangladesh including capital Dhaka. After the series of blasts, the militants carried out suicide attacks on different courts killing judges, lawyers and policemen. They had targeted courts as they considered the current judiciary as the stumbling block to their mission of establishing Islamic laws in this Muslim majority country. In 2005, the JMB killed at least 28 people through bombings and suicide attacks in Bangladesh and wounded hundreds of others.