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BD group to

send volunteers

to Bosnia

DHAKA: A radical Islamic group will send at least 100,000 Muslim volunteers to Bosnia to fight the Serbs, its leader said on Saturday.

About 300 Muslim youth signed up as Mujahideens, or Islamic fighters, as the recruitment began in Dhaka on Friday, Azizul Haq, chief of Islamic Unity Alliance told the Associated Press.

Haq said the recruitment will continue till Sept 22, when a conference of the volunteers has been planned in Dhaka.

He did not give details about how the volunteers will travel to Bosnia and whether they will be premitted to go.

Haq's party is the second largest Islamic fundamentalist group and it has only one lawmaker in Bangladesh's 330-member parliament.

The party draws its activists mainly from the country's Islamic schools.

Bangladesh has already sent more than 1,200 troops to the UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.-APP