Police confirmed that the five-member team would start work immediately after arrival in the northeastern city of Sylhet this morning and several teams of local police would provide the investigators with security.

Official news agency BSS reports that the British high commissioner, who was under treatment at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka for injuries, leaves for London today to spend time with his family.

The investigation goes two-pronged as the Criminal Investigation Department and Scotland Yard members with the help of local police will investigate the second bomb blast in five months at the 700-year-old shrine, said a senior police officer, who would not give his name as he said the incident is highly sensitive.

The British criminal investigation team will visit the shrine mosque where the Bangladesh-born envoy said Friday prayers shortly before the bomb exploded on impact bouncing off his abdomen. The investigators will also visit the environs of the scene and talk to local people to find leads to the attack.

On how long the UK team will stay in Sylhet, a police officer, seeking anonymity, said: "It depends on how quickly they can wrap up their investigation."

Talking to The Daily Star, Abdul Hai Khan, president of the District Bar Association, quoted his relative Choudhury as telling him by phone that a Scotland Yard team would visit Sylhet.

Earlier in the day, State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar yesterday told newspersons in Dhaka after a special meeting on law and order that Bangladesh would take assistance form the UK police service if it wanted to help probe Friday's blast.

Choudhury's visit to the shrine came barely 18 days after his new assignment as envoy. His appointment in Dhaka is notable as he is the first Briton from an ethnic minority background to hold such a senior diplomatic post.

RAID AND ARREST

Sylhet police and paramilitary forces raided the house of one Jewel in Shibganj Senpara in the city but could not arrest him, after he was named in some newspapers as the mastermind behind Friday's blast. The police declined to comment on the raid.

Police halted a procession of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) in the city's Chouhatta area as it was heading for the Court Point area to join a protest meeting organised by city and district units of the main opposition Awami League.

The demonstrators went on the rampage, damaging a microbus and a car and pelting shops with stones.

The police picked up five activists of AL's student chapter: City BCL Joint Convenor Iliasur Rahman, Organising Secretary Abdul Latif Ripon, Library Secretary Shamsul Islam, members Azad Hossain and Kamal Hossain.

Both ruling four-party alliance and the AL could not hold their scheduled programmes, as police ringed the Court Point area to deter any attacks and counter attacks between the two rival groups.

Eight people, who suffered wounds in Friday's blast, were released from MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital after police recorded statements from them.