Police today arrested three war crimes suspects from Maheshkhali upazila of Cox's Bazar hours after a war crimes tribunal issued arrest warrant against 16.

The arrestees are: Nurul Islam of Sonajanpara, Osman Gani of Sikderpara in Maheshkhali town and Zinnat Ali of Muhurirdail village of the upazila.

Police arrested them from their respective homes around 2:00pm, Tofael Ahmed, additional superintendent of Cox's Bazar police, told our Cox's Bazar correspondent.

The three are included in the wanted list floated by the war crimes tribunal. Police are conducting drives to arrest the other suspects, he added.

Earlier in the day, a special tribunal in Dhaka issued arrest warrant against 16 war crimes suspects of Cox's Bazar district for their alleged involvement in crimes against humanity during Liberation War.

The three-member International Crimes Tribunal-2 passed the order following a petition filed by the prosecution.

Prosecutor Rana Das Gupta told the court that investigators found primary evidence of wartime offences against the 16 suspects of Cox's Bazar district in 1971 war.

The allegation against the suspects was found when investigators were conducting investigation against three other war crimes suspects of the district, Prosecutor Rana said.

They are BNP leaders Md Rashid, 84, and Salamat Ullah Khan, 80, and Md Zakaria. Rashid is also a former BNP lawmaker and Salamat is a senior member of Cox's Bazar BNP unit.

Of them, Rashid and Salamat Ullah were arrested on March 1 and Zakaria remain absconding.

Prosecution today placed a progress probe report against the three suspects and sought more time on placing second probe report on them.

The tribunal after hearing the petition fixed July 22 for submitting the progress report.