Four children among seven killed in Moulvibazar militant hideout

Forensic experts have determined that there were four children among the seven people killed in apparent suicide blasts in a militant hideout at Nasirpur in Moulvibazar.

Moulvibazar Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 31 March 2017, 09:19 PM
Updated : 31 March 2017, 09:21 PM

But, the way bodies were torn apart and mutilated, the forensic doctors could not identify the gender of the children during the post-mortem examination, a doctor said.

The three adults include two women and a man, Moulvibazar Civil Surgeon Satyakam Chakrabarty told bdnews24.com after the post-mortem examination on Friday afternoon.

Quoting the forensic doctors, he said one of the four children was less than one year old while the three others were 2, 7 and 10 years old.

The two women were 20 and 30 years old while the male suspect was around 35 years old.

SWAT launched an assault codenamed 'Operation Hit Back' to neutralise the militant suspects at the tin-roofed house on Wednesday evening.   

After the operation ended on Thursday evening, police's counterterrorism unit chief Monirul Islam said seven to eight bodies were found in the house.

He also said police suspected the bodies were blown off in a 'suicide blast' and the deceased were members of revived Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Neo-JMB.

After getting the police's inquest report, Molvibazar General Hospital doctors Suubrata Kumar Roy, Abu Imran and Polash Roy conducted the post-mortem examination.

Polash said metal objects like splinters were found in the bodies, which already started to decompose. Samples were collected for DNA test, he said.

Police laid siege to another house in Barahat along with that in Nasirpur. The SWAT operation in Barahat, around 18 kilometres from Nasirpur, was yet to finish Friday night.

Both the houses are owned by an expatriate Bangladeshi living in London. His relative 'Jewel', who was taking care of the houses, said a man identifying himself as 'Mahfuz' rented the house in Nasirpur three months ago.

Police got the information that the two houses in Moulvibazar were being used as militant dens in another raid on a hideout in Sylhet.