DHAKA, Bangladesh, AP – Police questioned about 50 people in connection with a series of more than 100 explosions that shook nearly every major city in Bangladesh, killing two people and wounding at least 125.
The homemade bombs — many packed only with sawdust and planted outside government offices or courthouses — were apparently intended to cause limited damage, authorities said.
"We are working hard and our investigation is moving positively," Dhaka Metropolitan police official Mohammed Mazharul told The Associated Press. "We are adequately alert and have put necessary security measures in the capital."
Fifty suspects were arrested on Wednesday hours after the near-simultaneous bombings rocked the country, state news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha reported.
A bicycle-rickshaw driver and a 10-year-old boy were killed in separate blasts, and at least 125 people were injured. Most of the wounded were believed to have suffered minor burns, the Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha said.
No claims of responsibility were made, but leaflets from a banned Islamic group — the Jumatul Mujahedin — were found at the scene of all the explosions, officials said. The group wants to establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation governed by secular laws.
In recent years, several small militant Islamic groups advocating Islamic rule have sprung up in Bangladesh, mostly in the impoverished northern and southern regions. A number of those groups have been blamed by the government for a spate of bomb attacks, killings, robberies, extortion and harassment of villagers.