Terrorists linked to Bangladesh cafe attack killed in raid

Bangladeshi policemen cordon off the area during a raid on a building where suspected militants were holding up, in Sitakunda in Chittagong district of Bangladesh, on Thursday. (AP Photo)

DHAKA: Three suspected members of a terrorist group blamed for a deadly cafe attack in Bangladesh last July were killed on Thursday when their suicide vests exploded during a police raid on their hideout, a police official said.
Police said a woman was also among the four dead, who belonged to a faction of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh group, known as New JMB, which they have linked to attacks such as that on the cafe, which killed 22 people, mostly foreigners.
New JMB has pledged allegiance to Daesh, which claimed responsibility for the attack on the cafe in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter, although the government has cast doubt on that claim.
Two policemen were wounded when the terrorists inside a two-story building in Chittagong, about 200 km southeast of Dhaka, showered at least a dozen grenades on them, said police official Mohammad Moniruzzaman.
“The operation is over,” he said. “Our intelligence and bomb disposal and forensic units are now working.”
About 20 residents trapped in the building after Wednesday night’s raid began were taken to safety before the final assault started early on Thursday, Moniruzzaman said, adding that authorities also seized live grenades and a lot of explosives.
“The militants were wearing suicide vests which exploded,” he said, referring to the three men who died.
“We are not sure whether they detonated the vests themselves, or they exploded after being hit by bullets. The woman was shot by us.”
The dead had yet to be identified because their bodies had been reduced to fragments, he added.
“We suspect the militants might have had plans to attack foreigners in the city,” he said.
Al-Qaeda and Daesh have made competing claims over a recent spate of killings in Bangladesh.
Authorities have consistently ruled out the presence of such transnational groups, blaming domestic militants instead, though security experts say the scale and sophistication of the cafe attack suggested links to a transnational network.
Police have killed more than 50 suspected militants in shootouts since the cafe attack, including the man they say was its main planner, Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury.