AFP
Officer says suspect was shot dead along with two others during raid on militant hideout.
Bangladesh police stormed a militant hideout just outside Dhaka on Saturday, shooting dead three Islamist extremists, including the suspected mastermind of an attack on a café that killed 22 mostly foreign hostages last month.
“We can see three dead bodies here,” said senior police officer Sanwar Hossain. “Tamim Chowdhury is dead. He is the Gulshan attack mastermind and the leader of JMB [Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh],” he said, referring to a Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen believed to be behind the attack on the café in Dhaka.
Police earlier staged an hour-long gun battle with extremists at Paikpara in Narayanganj, a city 25 kilometers south of Dhaka, Hossain said.
Bangladesh national police chief A.K.M Shahidul Hoque told AFP police were “99 percent sure” that Tamim Chowdhury was in the hideout when police launched the assault.
Chowdhury, who returned from Canada in 2013, has been leading the banned JMB, which police say carried out the café attack in which 18 foreigners were shot and hacked to death in the country’s worst terror attack.