Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the mastermind of a cafe attack in Bangladesh that killed 22 people including an Indian girl last month, was today killed along with his two aides during a police raid on their hideout near the capital.
“The gunfight erupted after police started raiding a building at Naraynganj’s Pikeparha on the outskirts of Dhaka,” Counter-terrorism Unit’s Additional Deputy Commissioner Sanowar Hossain was quoted as saying by the a popular news website in Bangladesh.
The unit’s chief Monirul Islam earlier said the raid was conducted upon information gleaned from an arrested operative of the banned Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
Bangladesh police killed Dhaka cafe attack mastermind in a raid near Dhaka. Photo: Twitter/Internet
Police spokesman Jalaluddin confirmed to local news outlets that Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Chowdhury was among those killed during the raid, the second major clampdown after the nine suspected Islamist terrorists were killed last month.
A joint team from Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, police headquarters and district police cordoned off the house since the morning on information that a group of militants were staying there, superintendent of Narayanganj police Mainul Haq was quoted as saying by local news reports.
As the security forces tried to enter the house, the criminals opened fire from inside, he said.
Talking to reporters at the scene, the Inspector General of Police said the operation was carried out under codename ‘Operation Hit-strong 27’ in which police’s elite SWAT conducted the main part.
“The duration of the operation was one hour. When we entered into the house we saw three bodies lying on the floor,” he said. “The face of one of them completely matched with the photograph of Chowdhury, which made us sanguine that he is the man,” he said.
Another police officer at the scene said the slain militants used to live in the house as tenants identifying themselves as “medicine businessmen”.
He said the landlord extended cooperation in carrying out the raid. Few grenades and a pistol were found from the scene.
Chowdhury, 30, was identified by police as the mastermind of the country’s worst terror attack on July 1 at Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka that killed 22 people. An Indian girl was among 17 foreigners killed in the attack.
According to the investigators, Chowdhury had accompanied the five attackers from their Bashundhara flat to Gulshan, Dhaka and left the area after bidding them farewell just before the cafe siege began on July 1.
The investigators also found his involvement in the Sholakia attack on the July 7 Eid day that killed four people, including two constables, an attacker, and a local woman.
Chowdhury was also the mentor of the nine militants who were killed in a police operation at Kalyanpur on July 26.
According to police, Chowdhury used to stay in Canada and might have developed a network of financiers abroad before coming to Bangladesh in 2013.
