Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism campaign has a long way to go

FOR four days all eyes in Bangladesh were on Atia Mahal, a lime-green, five-floor apartment block in the north-eastern city of Sylhet. The police cordoned off the building on March 24th after receiving word that a group of Islamic militants had holed up in one of its flats. But it was only on March 27th that a special anti-terrorism unit managed to kill the last of the four besieged terrorists. Two days earlier, one of the four had put on a suicide-vest and blown himself up at the police cordon some 400 metres from the hideout, killing six people and injuring 50. It was the first indiscriminate suicide-attack on civilians in Bangladesh.