Clockwise from top left: SWAT members leave after busting an extremists’ den at Kalyanpur in Dhaka on Tuesday morning; CID officials conduct a search at the building after the drive; bodies of the suspected extremists are being carried by ambulances from the scene and clothes covered by a black IS flag are seen in one of the rooms of the building.
Nine suspected Islamist extremists were killed and an injured suspect was arrested in what police named ‘Operation Storm-26’ at a house at Kalyanpur in Dhaka early Tuesday.
Police said that they launched the operation at a ‘den of extremists’ under the cover of bachelors’ dormitory housed in Taj Manjil, locally known as Jahaj Building.
Police considered the operation as a major achievement in curbing extremism against the backdrop of July 1 Gulshan attack on a Dhaka cafe and July 7 attack on a police checkpoint near the country’s biggest eid congregation at Sholakia in Kishoreganj.
The injured suspect, identified as Rakibul Hasan Regan, 20, from Bogra, is now under treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital in police custody.
Officials at Bogra sadar police station said that they detained Rakibul’s mother, Nandigram Upazila Health Complex nursing officer Rokeya Akhter, for interrogation after Rakibul’s arrest.
They said that Rokeya lodged a general diary with Bogra police station on July 15, 2015 stating that Rakibul went missing after he went to attend medical admission coaching at Bogra unit of Retina Coaching Centre on July 14, 2015.
Dhaka Medical College physicians said that Rakibul claimed to them that he and his associates were members of Middle-East-based extremist organisation Islamic State.
After visiting the spot, inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque in the morning said that the attackers were members of local extremist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen Bangladesh.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters that the suspects had planned massive attacks like the one on the Gulshan cafe.
Police officials said the identity of the deceased extremist suspects could not be established until Tuesday night.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police posted photos of the nine deceased suspects on its Facebook page and urging people to inform police if anyone knew the identity of the killed suspects and had any information about them.
Photos supplied by the metropolitan police to media outlets showed that all the killed suspects bodies had black Panjabi, trouser and red-and-white turban, that resembled the dresses the July 1 Gulshan attack suspects wore in photos reportedly released by Islamic State and posted on website of SITE Intelligence Group.
Most of the suspects killed on Tuesday wore keds and some of them had backpacks, police officials said.
The photos show that the apartment had hardly any furniture. They showed that there were some backpacks with logo of Wilson. Same type of backpacks was carried by the Gulshan restaurant attackers.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Md Asaduzzaman Mia, at a briefing at its media centre in the afternoon, said that during a block raid at Kalyanpur near Kalyanpur Girls School at about 3:00am, extremism suspect hurled a grenade and opened fire targeting police from a fourth floor apartment of the six-storey building, Taj Manjil.
Police also retaliated by firing when a youth, later identified as Rakibul, jumped on the tin-roof of an adjacent building and tried to flee hurling bomb, he said.
Asaduzzaman said that Rakibul was arrested when he became wounded by a bullet and was taken to the hospital where he informed police that he left his nine companions and they had huge firearms, bombs, grenades and explosives in their dormitory on the fourth floor of the building.
He said that they, considering possible harms of the residents of the other apartments of the building as well as the people of adjacent area, launched the operation at 5:51am and all the nine suspects were killed during the hour-long operation.
The ‘Operation Storm-26’ was led by the members of Special Weapons and Tactics’ assault team, he said.
Metropolitan police’s bomb disposal unit, Detective Branch, and elite force Rapid Action Battalion secured the area, he said.
He said that the suspects exploded at least 12 grenades and opened fire targeting police and a cop was injured.
He also said that police seized 12 locally made grenades, five kilograms of explosive gel, 19 detonators, four 7.62 bore rifles, four pistols, 19 bullets, several swords, commando knives and guerrilla knives.
He said that two black flags reading Allahu Akbar were also found.
Photos of the flags resembled to that of the Islamic State.
Following the operation, a huge contingent of security forces had cordoned off the residential building.
Police believed it was a den of an Islamist group and they had rented the apartment on June 20.
Panic gripped the entire Kalyanpur area since the raid began.
Police kept the whole area cordoned and allowed none but law enforcers to enter until 4:30pm when police took the bodies to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy.
Dhaka Medical College forensic department assistant professor Sohel Mahmud said that the post mortem examination would be conducted today.
According police officials, police picked up most of the residents of the building, including three women and two children, for interrogation. The house owner Atahar Uddin Ahmed’s wife Mamtaj Parvin and son Mazharul Islam were among those picked up, the sources said. Atahar is a non-resident Bangladeshi.
Metropolitan police deputy commissioner (media) Masudur Rahman, however, could not confirm the number of the detained.
None was allowed to enter into the building until 7:30pm when the building’s main gate was found locked, said SM Emdadul Huq, one of the residents of the building, who was out of his house Monday night.
He said he could not enter into the building they rented on July 22.
He said that his son Enamul Haq, a fourth year MBBS student at Ibn Sina Medical College, was picked up by police.
All the schools in Kalyanpur and Mirpur areas remained closed for Tuesday on request from the police on safety grounds, Kalyanpur thana education officer Abdul Kader Fakir told New Age.
Bazlur Rahman, who resides in the area, said the extremism suspects were chanting slogans ‘Allahu Akbar’ since midnight past Monday and they were also telling police that they came for going to heaven and the police would go to hell.
‘We passed a sleepless night amid sounds of sporadic gunshots and slogans. They were chanting slogans even after azan for Fazr prayers was called. When the operation began at dawn it was totally a war zone,’ he said.
Source: New Age
