Police suspects military assaults killed neo-JMB chief

Police today suspected one of the four slain militants in Sylhet to be the top leader of neo-JMB Musa while military operations are still underway to clear their wired hideout.

“Our intelligence suggest one of them (four slain)is top neo-JMB leader Musa,” police’s assistant inspector general M Moniruzzaman told BSS this afternoon.

He, however, added forensic investigation was ordered to further confirm of his identity as his face was mutilated in the security encounter.

Officials earlier said Musa was entrusted with the charge of leading the Neo-JMB, which staged the July 1, 2016 attack in Dhaka’s Holey Artisan Restaurant, as the subsequent anti-militancy clampdown saw several of their top leaders dead.

Moniruzzaman’s comments came as explosions rocked the neighbourhood as army troops clear the wired militant den in Sylhet a day after their commando assault killed all four extremists holed up inside, after four days of security siege to the five-storey building.

Witnesses and officials said smokes rolled upward after several powerful blasts rocked the area as army’s bomb disposal experts were engaged in defusing the explosives, laid out at different corners of the building by the militants before their deaths.

“The newsmen are still debarred from going near the building as army’s explosive experts were working inside to defuse the devices apparently through ‘controlled explosions’,” a BSS journalist reported from the scene.

An official familiar with the operation said the army troops were using a drone to get a clearer picture before stepping inside different corners of the building to evade booby traps.

Two of the militants, a male and a female, were killed yesterday a day after the two others detonated their suicide vests after being shot by para-commandos.

Bodies of two killed on Sunday were being autopsied as army handed them over to police, but the two others, including that of presumed Musa, were still inside the building as those were wired or surrounded by explosives, officials said.

Other than Musa, officials identified the two of the remaining slain militants as Morzina and Kawsar but could not immediately name the fourth one.

Source: BSS