Dhaka, Bangladesh (CNN) Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested nearly 150 suspected militants and more than 11,000 others as part of a crackdown on extremism after a wave of brutal killings. "It shows that the government has no clue as to who is doing these killings or else the number would not be as big as it is now," Ahmed told CNN. Police said they detained 145 suspected Islamist militants over four days of raids and that the rest were accused of everything from theft and drug dealing to violence. But the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, said the raids were designed to detain its leaders and workers. An officially secular but Muslim-majority nation, Bangladesh has seen a surge of targeted killings -- blamed on Islamist radicals -- that have claimed the lives of secularists, religious minorities and gay activistsPolice have said that most of the suspected militants were members of Jama'atul Mujahedin Bangladesh, a banned Islamist group.

Source: CNN June 15, 2016 07:52 UTC