DHAKA (AFP) - A man described as a top Islamic militant and explosives expert has been arrested in Bangladesh in a raid that saw his wife try to blow herself up, police said Friday.

The country's elite Rapid Action Battalion said they had been hunting 35-year-old Mijan, who uses only one name, for several months but managed to trace him to a house on Thursday night.

"He was the top bomb expert of the banned Islamic group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh"s (JMB)," said Major Shawkat Hossain, a spokesman for the crack police unit.

"After his arrest, he said what was apparently a code word and his wife detonated a high-powered explosive inside the house, which injured her and blew her hand off. It was an attempted suicide attack."

Their two young children were also in the house and were wounded, he said. Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been hit by a series of attacks by Islamic terror groups in recent years - including 400 coordinated bombings on just one
day in 2005 that were blamed on the JMB.

In 2007, the then army-backed government hanged six JMB figures, including its leader and his deputy, but police believe it has regrouped and have made several arrests in the past six months.