DHAKA, Aug 19: A Bangladesh madressah student found with a video of speeches by Osama bin Laden and military-style training techniques is among 100 people held after a nationwide wave of bombings linked to Muslim extremists, police said on Friday. A number of those arrested were students or teachers from madressahs, a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

More than 350 small home-made bombs exploded Wednesday in almost every town and city in Bangladesh. Two people were killed and more than 100 suffered slight injuries.

“We’ve arrested three suspects including one 18-year-old madressah student who was caught with a video which shows speeches of Osama bin Laden and military training strategies,” said Khan Sayeed Hasan, commissioner of Khulna Metropolitan Police.

“From the other two we found books containing training manuals,” he said, adding that all three had been transferred to the capital for further questioning.

More than 100 suspects had been detained, the official BSS news agency said Friday, quoting police officials.

Those detained after the blasts were to be interrogated at a central unit set up in the capital Dhaka, police said.

“These people are the lowest rung of the militant organisation that carried out these attacks,” the security official said.

“We are questioning them to try to find out the extent of their operation and who their chiefs are,” he added.

Hundreds of people marched in the capital Friday in protest at the bombings.

Security was stepped up across the country after the attacks but Home Minister Lutfuzzaman Babar said the situation was now “normal”.

“We are analysing what has happened and why,” he told ATN Bangla television.

Farrukh Ahmed, the head of the national investigation, said officers were still gathering evidence and information from the suspects who were arriving in Dhaka.

“Hopefully we will find out the culprits very soon,” said Ahmed, declining to elaborate.

Bangladesh’s Islamist-allied coalition government has previously maintained that it does not have a problem with Muslim extremists despite concerns expressed by the country’s opposition, neighbouring India and foreign government officials.

In February it banned two extremist groups including Jamayetul Mujahideen, which has been linked by police to Wednesday’s bombings.

Leaflets bearing the group’s name were found at all the blast sites, the Home Ministry said.

The leaflets called for the installation of Islamic law and threatened to carry out more killings if its demands were not met.—AFP