Bangladesh police raid hideouts, kill 11 militants

Bangladeshi security forces have killed 11 militants blamed for the massacre of nearly two dozen people, mostly foreigners, in a July attack on a café in the capital Dhaka.

Minister of Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan said in a statement that the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had killed the militants in three raids on the hideouts of the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) group in the Dhaka suburb of Gazipur and the central district of Tangail during the early hours of Saturday.

“We requested them to surrender but they opened fire at our officers, which prompted them to retaliate,” Khan said, adding that all “extremists” were members of the JMB group.

According to Mufti Mahmud Khan, a RAB spokesman, some firearms, ammunition and meat cleavers were discovered during the raids.

Khan also said the JMB’s new leader, known as Akash, was among the dead. Akash came to be the new head of the group after security forces killed the group’s former ringleader Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, a Canadian citizen of Bangladeshi origin, in August.

Police said the 30-year-old Chowdhury was behind the deadly attack on the café in Dhaka on July 1, where 22 people were shot and hacked to death.

SS