Bangladesh ‘cafe attack planner killed’ in police raid

Thirty-year-old Chowdhury, who returned from Canada in 2013, had earlier been named by police as the suspected mastermind of the attack on the cafe in Gulshan, an upscale Dhaka neighbourhood.

Police said Saturday that four suspected militants, including Tamim Chowdhury, were killed in a raid on a two-story house outside of Bangladesh’s most-populated city.

20 hostages, including 17 foreigners and two police officers, were killed in the cafe attack on the 1st of last month.

Security officials were tipped off that Chowdhury was hiding in Narayanganj, Bangladesh police chief Shahidul Hoque said.

“The operation went on for an hour”. After the operation, police entered the house and found three bodies inside the house, the police said. They refused to surrender to police, and a gunbattle ensued. Three students from American universities were among those killed. “Among those three was a person whose face looked similar to a photo of Tamin Chowdhury and I can now confirm Chowdhury was among the dead”.

Together with the elite security force, the Rapid Action Battalion, they have carried out a series of raids on suspected militant hideouts.

A joint team from Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, police headquarters and district police cordoned off the house since the morning on information that a group of militants were staying there, superintendent of Narayanganj police Mainul Haq was quoted as saying by “The Daily Star”.

“The chapter of Tamim has ended here”, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters, according to the AP. Analysts said Chowdhury and two other Bangladeshi expatriates on that list could have been acting as links between local and global extremist groups.

Officials said security issues, including Dhaka-Washington anti-terror cooperation, would feature during Kerry’s talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart on Monday.

But police believe that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was involved in organising the cafe attack.

Twenty civilians, mostly foreign nationals, were killed after the terrorists claimed to be of Islamic State holed up overnight at the restaurant.

Police had also announced a similar reward for dismissed Bangladesh Army major Syed Md Ziaul Haque, who they claim leads another militant group the Ansarullah Bangla Team. However, Bangladeshi authorities said the attack was carried out by local Islamist groups and insisted that ISIS had no presence in the majority-Muslim country.