DHAKA: At least 11 suspected Islamists militants, including the new leader of a banned terror outfit, were killed in three separate raids carried out by security forces on their hideouts here today.
Seven militants were killed in Gazipur city’s Afarkhola area in a raid at a two-storey house by the counter-terrorism unit of police.
“Seven militants were killed in our encounter with them at Afarkhola area of (suburban) Gazipur,” additional police chief of the district Russel Sheikh said.
Dhaka regional commander of reconstituted Jamaatul Mujaheedin Bangladesh or Neo-JMB, Akash, was also among the dead militants, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters.
Akash led the Neo JMB’s Dhaka city unit after the death of Tamim Chowdhury, who was killed during a raid earlier in Narayanganj.
The identities of other militants, however, could not be ascertained immediately.
The law enforcers, using a loudspeaker, asked the militants to surrender but they traded gunfire, ignoring the call, said Monirul Islam, chief of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), ‘The Daily Star’ reported.
The development came hours after elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) killed four militants in near-simultaneous raids on their hide-outs in Gazipur and central Tangail district.
“Four members of the neo-JMB (Jamaatul Mujaheedin Bangladesh) were killed in two separate encounters in (suburban) Gazipur and Tangail,” RAB spokesman Commander Mufti Mahmud Khan had told reporters.
An AK-47 rifle, dozens of bullets, bomb-making explosive substances, four laptops, three machetes and a laminating machine were also recovered from a hide-out, an official said.
Neo-JMB is said to be ideologically linked to the ISIS which had claimed responsibility of the attack on Dhaka’s Holey Artisan restaurant on July 1 in which nine Italians, seven Japanese, an American, an Indian and five Bangladeshis, including two police officers, were killed.
Today’s anti-militant clampdown was the second massive crackdown since July 26 when nine suspected militants were killed in a pre-dawn police raid at their hideout here.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at that time said that a major terrorist attack was averted in Bangladesh with the security raid as the militants had hatched a plot to stage another July 1 like assault. (AGENCIES)
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