Bangla guns down 11 militants

TT, Oct. 8: Security forces in Bangladesh today killed 11 suspected militants, continuing with the mandate from the Sheikh Hasina government to neutralise the extremists trying to destabilise the country.

Police said that nine of the militants were killed in raids at Patartek and Haripal areas of Gazipur city, around 30km from Dhaka. The remaining two were killed in Tangail town, around 100km from the capital.

"Today's operations were very well co-ordinated. They proved the prowess of our security forces," Major General Abdur Rashid, a security analyst, said.

He said that Akash, head of the Neo Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (the revamped version of the old Jamaat) was believed to be among the dead.

Akash had apparently assumed charge of the outfit after its previous head, Tamim Chowdhury, was killed in a similar raid in Narayanganj.

The Neo JMB is believed to have radicalised the urban youth in large numbers in recent years. Its operatives are accused of planning and executing, with Islamic State guidance, some of the recent terror attacks in Bangladesh such as the July 1 café attack in Dhaka's diplomatic enclave.

With the militants posing a threat to the government, the security establishment has begun chasing them to their hideouts. On August 27, a police raid on Dhaka's outskirts killed Chowdhury, a Canadian-Bangladeshi believed to have masterminded the café attack, along with two accomplices.

On July 26, the forces had killed nine militants, allegedly linked to the same outfit, in a dawn swoop in Dhaka, prompting Hasina to claim another possible terror attack had been foiled.

The biggest success today came at a two-storey house in Patartek, where the police's counter-terrorism unit killed seven militants, the additional police chief of the district, Russel Sheikh, told PTI. Akash was among the seven killed.

Senior policemen told the Bangladeshi media they had first cordoned the house off around 10am and used a loudhailer to ask the militants to surrender. The militants fired on them, starting a gunfight.