Security at embassies in Bangladesh stepped up after bomb threat
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-28 14:13

Security at embassies in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka has been stepped up after a faxed message signed in the name of Al-Qaeda threatened to blow up the British and US missions, police said.

The message, received by the British High Commission early Sunday, also threatened European embassies but did not them individually.

British first secretary W. M Stevenson told police Sunday the commission had received a fax from someone who claimed to be a member of Al-Qaeda, said sub-inspector Rabiul Islam of Dhaka's Gulshan police station.

The fax said "that they would blow up the British, US and all European embassies," Islam said, adding that security was immediately being increased in the city's diplomatic area.

The fax was signed by a man giving the name Maniq Hossain and a town in the southern Chandpur district.

"We have also sent an officer to Chandpur to investigate whether this man actually exists," Islam added.

Authorities in Bangladesh have been on high alert since a series of small bomb blasts on August 17 and October 3 in which five people were killed.

In the first attack, hundreds of bombs went off almost simultaneously in almost every main town and city across the country.

Police linked the bomb attacks to the outlawed Jamayetul Mujahideen group, which is calling for the imposition of strict Islamic law in the Muslim-majority country.

Two judges were killed in another attack earlier this month that was linked to the same group.

Last week, the party of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) expelled one of its lawmakers after he blamed his own party for the rise of hardline Islamists.

"They (the extremists) want to establish Allah's law. They will demolish courts, kill judges and those who frame laws, and part of the BNP supported them," said expelled party member Abu Hena.

The Bangladesh government is a four-party coalition led by Zia's BNP. The coalition includes two Islamic parties that have condemned the attacks and called for extremists to be rooted out.