During a raid on the hideout in the Ukhiya Hills of Cox’s Bazar, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested two commanders of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and seized a significant amount of foreign and local armaments, including grenades and rocket batteries.
Master Salimullah, 38, the ARSA commander, and Md Riaz, 27, his colleague, are the inmates. They are both ARSA members.
For the sake of public safety, a special bomb disposal team from the Bangladesh Army visited the location and demolished the explosives, grenades, IEDs, and rocket cells that had been found.
At a brief news conference held at Lal Pahar in Ukhiya, the location of the incident, Arafat Islam, commander of the RAB’s law and media wing, provided this information.
According to Arafat Islam, on the basis of top-secret information obtained at Lal Pahar, close to the Ukhiya Rohingya Camp-20 Extension, a RAB squad searched ARSA’s refuge in the Ukhiya hills on Wednesday morning.
In the meantime, thirteen cocktails, three rifles, five grenades, ten hand grenades created in the area, one foreign-made revolver (nine mm), one LG, three cartridges, and five grenades were found. He further stated that Arsa commander Master Salimullah and his aide Md Riaz were apprehended during their escape.
According to the RAB commander, some Rohingyas had been shot and murdered in the Rohingya camp for a few days. RAB stepped up intelligence operations in the camp as a result. After that, the location of the terrorist group ARSA in Myanmar was determined using certain information.
Later, the campaign began, and the whole region was encircled. The terrorists once opened fire when they detected that RAB was around. Then RAB retaliated as well. No casualties were reported.
The raid comes following the murder of five Rohingya activists by ARSA miscreants. In recent weeks, the insurgent group has been empowered beyond the border following collaboration with the Myanmar Junta.
ARSA rose to prominence by organising villagers for a revolutionary struggle against the Myanmar Armed Forces and their collaborators who have led a genocide against the Rohingya community for decades. However, many activists have alleged ARSA is a creation of the Tatmadaw as the activities of the group enabled the army to lead the infamous clearance operation of 2017. In the name of clearance operations, Tatmadaw led forces targeted the entire community in it’s main habitat West of the Mayu river and forced more than a million Rohingyas to take shelter in South Western Bangladesh where a sprawling refugee camp had to be created within days to host the population escaping the genocidal operation.
Within months, ARSA militants took control of the camp which sits on a lucrative smuggling route. In the camps, they created a reign of terror killing and raping anyone who opposed their views or their grip on the lives of ordinary people.
Many locals were also apprehended and killed by ARSA.
Following the killing of popular Rohingya activist Mohibullah, law enforcement agencies cracked down on the group.
However, though the group’s iron grip on the camp loosened, ARSA had always kept up assassinations of Rohingya men opposed to the group’s activities.
In the last 8 days, five activists, all of them community leaders, were murdered by ARSA men.
