Bosnian police have launched a massive operation against a conservative Muslim community, to prevent what they called attempts to destabilise the country.
Hundreds of police officers raided the mountain village of Gornja Maoca in northern Bosnia.
Source: BBC
- The village is home to Bosnian followers of Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam.
- Some 600 officers surrounded the village before raiding it on Monday morning, the spokesman added.
- It was the biggest police operation in Bosnia since its 1992-1995 war, said the state prosecutor's office.
- Security forces closed off the isolated northern village, which is near the northern city of Brcko and has around 100 residents, while the raid was in progress.
- "The goal of this operation... is to identify people accused of endangering the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina, threatening the constitutional order and promoting national, racial and religious hatred," Boris Grubesic, the prosecutor's spokesman, told AFP news agency.
- Local radio reported that several people were arrested - including Wahhabi cleric Nusret Imamovic - and ammunition was seized, but this was not confirmed by police.
- Originating in the Arabian peninsula, Wahhabism forms the basis for the ideology followed by al-Qaeda and the Taleban.
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