In its defence, Inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque said the operation is to bring the radicals to book and dismantle their network.
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Authorities in Bangladesh arrested more than 5000 people over the weekend, including 85 suspected Islamist militants.
The group most targeted in this particular raid is the banned Islamic group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the AFP notes, though members of another Islamist group, Hizb ut Tahrir, have also been detained. The government rejects claims of responsibility from the Islamic State (IS) group and a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda, saying global jihadists have no presence in Bangladesh.
Militants have killed more than 30 people in Bangladesh since February past year.
The main opposition party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, dismisses such accusations and said the mass arrests were a ploy to suppress political opponents. Of these thousands, 120 of them were suspected Islamic extremists; the rest were petty criminals.
The BNP claimed that more than 2,000 of its leaders and activists have been arrested during the anti-militancy drive.
Islamist militants have killed over 30 people in Bangladesh since early previous year, including atheist bloggers, gay rights activists, university professors, Hindus, and Christians.
Of them, 1,861 were held following the issue of arrest warrants by court, police said in a media release on Saturday.
Dhaka denies that militant groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda are operating in Bangladesh, instead blaming the opposition for orchestrating the violence.
The arrest was made as police in the capital Dhaka said their detectives nabbed two more militants belonging to banned militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team.
Police in Bangladesh have arrested more than 3,000 people in a nationwide crackdown following a spate of violent attacks as the country’s prime minister vowed to catch “each and every killer”. In separate incidents last week, two Hindus were fatally attacked in the Muslim-majority nation. The killing Friday morning of a Hindu ashram worker in northern Bangladesh was also claimed by the IS group, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist activity online and cited the Amaq News Agency.
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‘Only a fraction of the people who have been arrested are members of Islamist militant groups, ‘ he said, adding the total number of militants arrested since Friday was 119.
