CHAPAINAWABGANJ, Nov 28, 2017 (BSS) – Three presumed militants were killed today as elite anti-crime force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) wrapped up their overnight crackdown at a militant den in Sadar upazila of the district, officials said.
“We have wrapped up the operation . . . three bodies were found on the spot,” RAB’s spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said while talking to newsmen after the operation at the scSne.
He said the slain three militants visibly blew themselves up staging suicide blasts also burning down the den, a hay-made hut, defying calls of surrender from law enforcers early in the morning while the RAB personnel laid the siege around it at about 3 am.
Mahmud said the militants, visibly belonging to Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), rented the house at remote Alatuli union’s shoal of the Padma river 15 days ago identifying themselves as migratory bird watchers.
RAB’s additional director general Colonel Anwar Latif Khan earlier in the morning reached the scene in a helicopter along with explosive disposal experts of the elite police unit.
RAB seized three hand grenades, seven detonators, 12 power jells, two pistols among other materials from the house and detained its owner his wife and mother-in-law for interrogation.
Officials and witnesses said the scene was handed over to police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for collecting evidence for subsequent legal actions.
People in the neighboiurhood said two presumed militants were seen roaming around the area for the past several weeks and while enquired by the local residents they claimed to be NGO workers.
RAB officials said they located the militant den based on information provided by militants captured earlier during a crackdown at Dhaka’s Mirpur area when a militant couple was killed.