Police enforce siege to 3 suspected militant hideouts afresh

Police today raided a third militant hideout in Comilla hours after laying simultaneous sieges to two other terrorist dens in Moulvibazar, just a day after the country saw end of a bloody anti-militancy army assault.

“Police raided the third suspected militant den in Comilla . . . meanwhile we have sent out SAWT (elite Special Weapons and Tactics) unit to Moulvibazar,” a police spokesman in Dhaka told BSS.

Six people, two being police officers, were killed in militants retaliation outside the den ahead of deaths of all their four fellow militants, holed up inside, in the commandos assault.

Police, however, suspected one of them to be chief of the Neo-JMB, which carried out the deadly July 1, 2016 attack on a Dhaka cafe leaving 22 dead, 17 being foreigners. Comilla’s police chief told newsmen at the scene said they kept the den there suspecting several militants equipped with explosives were holed up inside.

Hours ahead of the siege in Comilla, militants’ hurled grenades towards police’s counter terrorism unit personnel as they laid simultaneous raided two of their hideouts, one in scenic Moulvibazar town and another on its outskirts.

“SWAT team joined police and RAB (elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion) at the scene and visibly chalking up plans for their subsequent actions,” a BSS journalist reported by phone as he was reached here by phone.

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal earlier told newsmen in Dhaka that four to five militants presumed to be inside the hideout tracked down in Moulvibazar town but at least eight were suspected to be holed up with huge explosives in their second den in a nearby village.

“Our plan to is to evade casualties, if required army will be called out afresh,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told newsmen in Dhaka earlier today after the reports of Moulvibazar siege broke.

Journalists at the scene reported army officers were also seen observing the situation at the site in an apparent preparedness to respond to orders for commando assaults.

Residents in the neighbourhood said sounds of gunshots and grenade explosions wake them early in the morning as police facing militants’ grenades that missed targets as they launched the predawn raid at two spots in the district.

A police officer told newsmen they suspected the militants lived in both the buildings as tenants with a Bangladeshi-origin British national being the owner of the both.

Authorities enforced a strict ban on onlookers’ entrance within the vicinity of the dens to evade casualties.

Source: BSS