Crude bomb exploded outside head office of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh
A crude bomb exploded outside the head office of Grameen Bank in Dhaka’s Mirpur area early Monday morning, November 10, 2025. According to police, two unidentified men riding a motorcycle threw the crude bomb outside the road leading to the bank at around 3:45 a.m.
Search operation has been launched to find the miscreants. Recently, a series of violent events has taken place in Dhaka in recent weeks as political tensions continue to rise.
Bangladesh Grameen Bank
The bank was founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on 2 October 1983. The bank is headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Muhammad Yunus was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 to help poor families trapped in high-interest, exploitative lending. He personally lent US$27 to 42 families so they could produce and sell goods without relying on moneylenders. This experience convinced him that small loans, if made available on a wider scale, could support rural businesses and reduce poverty in Bangladesh.
Yunus then began developing what later became the Grameen Bank model. “Grameen” means rural or village in Bengali. Working with the University of Chittagong and a national commercial bank, he started a research project to test whether microcredit could work for the rural poor. The first village to benefit was Jobra in 1976, and over the next two years, the project expanded to nearby villages.
With support from Bangladesh Bank, the pilot programme was extended in 1979 to Tangail District and later to many other districts across the country.
On 2 October 1983, the Bangladesh government formally converted the project into Grameen Bank through a special ordinance. Bankers Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton from ShoreBank in Chicago assisted Yunus in establishing the bank with support from the Ford Foundation.
Although Grameen Bank’s repayment rates fell during the severe 1998 floods, the institution recovered in the following years. By early 2005, it had disbursed US$4.7 billion in loans, and by the end of 2008, the amount reached US$7.6 billion, helping millions of poor borrowers.
In 2011, the Bangladesh government removed Muhammad Yunus from his position in Grameen Bank, stating that at age 72, he had surpassed the legal retirement age for the post.
