Bangladeshi police kill three extremists, including the alleged mastermind behind the Dhaka cafe attack
Bangladesh police stormed a militant hideout outside Dhaka on Saturday, shooting dead three Islamist extremists, including the suspected mastermind of an attack on a cafe that killed 22 mostly foreign hostages last month.
“We can see three dead bodies here,” senior police officer Sanwar Hossain said.
“Tamim Chowdhury is dead. He is the Gulshan attack mastermind and the leader of JMB [Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, a domestic militant outfit],” he said.
The operation went on for an hour. We can see three dead bodies. They did not surrender. They threw four-five grenades at police and fired from AK 22 rifles
Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen, had earlier been named by police as the suspected mastermind of the attack on the cafe in Gulshan, an upscale Dhaka neighbourhood.
The bodies were retrieved after police staged an hour-long gun battle with extremists in Narayanganj, a city 25km south of Dhaka, Hossain said.
“The operation went on for an hour. We can see three dead bodies. They did not surrender. They threw four-five grenades at police and fired from AK 22 rifles,” Bangladesh national police chief A.K.M Shahidul Hoque said.
“Three extremists were killed. Among them, one of the dead persons looked exactly like the photo of Tamim Chowdhury that we have.”
