Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) on Tuesday detained five suspected militants after a brief gunfight at Thanchi upazila of Bandarban district. RAB’a Director General M Khurshid Hossain said RAB members were engaged in a gunfight with new militant group 'Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya’ and Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF), an armed group in the Chattogram Hill Tract (CHT), at Silopi Bampara in Ruma upazila in the morning. Tipped off, a team of RAB conducted a drive at Thanchi-Loicri bordering area early in the morning. But sensing the presence of the elite force, the members of the Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya and the KNF opened fire on them, forcing the security officials to retaliate. Eight members of the RAB sustained injuries during the gunfight, he said. They are now undergoing treatment. Also read: CTTC arrests 5 ‘HuJI militants', 1 ‘Al Qaeda member’ in Dhaka However, the elite force also detained five suspected militants of the groups during the drive, he added. So far, RAB have detained 42 members of the Jamatul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqiya and 14 members of the KNF since October 23. They were later sent to jail, pending further legal procedures.  

A bomb planted by suspected militants derailed a passenger train in a remote area in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, injuring at least 15 people on board, officials said. A separatist group later claimed responsibility. The train was passing through the district of Bolan in Baluchistan province when the bomb went off, according to a district administrator, Samiullah Agha. The explosion was so powerful that it derailed eight train cars, Agha said. Rescuers transported the injured to a nearby hospital, and engineers were repairing the damaged rail tracks. Some of the more seriously injured were moved to a military hospital in Quetta, the provincial capital in Baluchistan. Read more: Suicide blast in southern Pakistan kills 3 Chinese, driver Hours later, the separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army, which was designated a “terrorist” group by the United States in 2019, claimed responsibility for the attack. Azad Baloch, a spokesman for the group, said their fighters targeted security forces traveling by train to the garrison city of Rawalpindi in eastern Punjab province. Government and military officials did not immediately comment on the separatist group's claim. For over a decade, Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by ethnic Baluch separatists seeking autonomy from the Islamabad government or outright independence Pakistani militants also have a presence in the province, which borders both Afghanistan and Iran. Read more: Suicide bombing kills 56 at Shiite mosque in Pakistan

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested five alleged members of the militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla team (ABT), including a female member, from Ashulia and Dhamrai in Dhaka on Saturday.