BANGLADESH: Security forces claim to have killed three people, including prime suspect Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen Tamim Chowdhury.
As the police tried to enter the house, the suspects opened fire from inside [ Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]
Bangladesh police have stormed a house outside the capital, Dhaka, shooting dead three people, including the main suspect in the last month’s cafe attack that killed 22 hostages including the foreigners individuals.
“We can see three dead bodies here,” senior police officer Sanwar Hossain told AFP news agency on Saturday.
“Tamim Chowdhury is dead. He is the Gulshan attack mastermind and the leader of JMB (Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, a domestic armed outfit),” he said.
Tamim Chowdhury was earlier named as the main suspect of the attack on the cafe.
“The bodies were retrieved after police staged an hour-long gun battle with the suspects in Narayanganj, a city 25km south of Dhaka”, Hussain 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 AKM Shahidul Hoque said.
Islamic State had claimed obligation regarding the cafe attack and while the government has dismissed the case, security specialists say the scale and modernity of the attack recommended connections to trans-national systems.