As top counterterrorism official Monirul Islam told The Associated Press, “police sharpshooters raided a two-story house in Narayanganj district near the capital, Dhaka, after receiving a tip that Tamim Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi-born Canadian, and others were hiding there”.
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“The gunfight erupted this morning after police started raiding a building at Naraynganj’s Pikeparha”, Counter-terrorism Unit’s Additional Deputy Commissioner Sanowar Hossain was quoted as saying by the bdnews24.Com. After the operation, police entered the house and found three bodies, the police said.
Chowdhury was the mastermind of the July 1 attack and another attack on an Eid congregation outside Dhaka on July 7 marking the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, he said.
JMB, campaigning for establishment of Islamic rule in Bangladesh, carried out a series of bombing attacks in 63 out of the country’s 64 districts, including capital Dhaka on August 17, 2005, leaving two people dead and 150 others injured.
The IGP said law enforcers had given the militants scope to surrender but they did not take it, and instead opened fire and hurled grenades.
He initially said four militants had been killed but later revised the number to three.
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.
The Malaysian police said last month that at least two of the militants behind the cafe attack had attended Monash, although they did not name them.
Analysts say ISIS in April identified Chowdhury as its national commander.
The Canadian government said Saturday it was aware of news reports that Chowdhury was killed in Bangladesh and was trying to get more information from Bangladeshi authorities.
Since the 1 July cafe attack a series of raids have been carried out on suspected militant hideouts, resulting in the deaths of 24 alleged extremists.
But police believe that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was involved in organising the cafe attack. Those include killings of secular bloggers and publishers by machete-wielding assailants as well as the slayings of several foreigners, gay rights activists and members of minority religious groups.
The Islamic State organisation claimed responsibility and the gunmen were pictured posing with IS flags in images posted on a website affiliated to the group.
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Critics say Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s administration is in denial about the nature of the threat posed by armed groups and accuse her of trying to exploit the attacks to demonise her domestic opponents.
