Law enforcers disposed at least 16 crude bombs seized from a Mirpur building during an operation to capture militants today.

After the operation, members of Detective Branch (DB) and bomb-disposal unit of police gathered the explosives at a place near the building in Mirpur Section 1 and deactivated them with a series of controlled explosions.

“The explosives have striking similarity with those used during Hossaini Dalan and Kamrangir Char blasts,” Monirul Islam, DB’s joint commissioner, told the media at a press briefing after the successful raid.

The “criminals” were staying on the sixth floor of the building in disguise of students for the last four months, said Sanowar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of DB.
Dressed in casuals, detectives picked up the ‘bombs’ from a shoe-case like box without any protective gears and placed them near a wall on the ground at a nearby plot.

The bomb-disposal unit members placed couple of tyres around the pit where they intended to dispose the seized explosives. They used pipes and other devices to prepare the pit, and attached a long cable with a firing pin.

After they moved back to a safe distance, the explosives were detonated. They repeated the process until all the seized bombs were disposed. 

The plot where the disposal of the bombs took place was surrounded by a rickshaw garage, a mazar and residential buildings. And the wall where they picked the spot was the back side of another tin-shed house.   

Since morning the police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) members cordoned off the six-storey building on Road 9, Block-A of Mirpur-1 following information that alleged criminals were hiding there.

Among the detainees, three are key members of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Monirul Islam told the reporters.