Explosives found inside Ashulia militant hideout, four terror suspects surrender

The 11-hour raid by the Rapid Action Battalion or RAB on a house on the outskirts of Dhaka ended with the surrender of four terror suspects and seizure of explosives.

Savar Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 16 July 2017, 12:18 PM
Updated : 16 July 2017, 05:14 PM

The elite police unit said the suspects belonged to a faction of banned group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB and that they were 'planning a major attack.

Around 1am on Sunday, the RAB sealed off a house at Noyarhat’s Chourabali neighbourhood in Savar's Ahsulia area.

A standoff between security forces and the suspects continued till noon, during which shots were fired and bombs were hurled from inside the house.

After several calls to surrender by RAB, the four men turned themselves in between 12pm and 1pm.

RAB spokesperson Mufti Mahmud Khan told the media on the scene later that they have found improvised explosive devices or IEDs inside the house.

Khan, who heads the RAB's media wing, said that their bomb disposal units were working to defuse the IEDs and that further details of the raid will be provided to the media in Dhaka.

RAB said they have identified the four suspects as Mozammel Haque, Rashedul Nabi, Erfanul Huq and Alamgir.

Officials said Mozammel was in charge of the unit.

The owner of the building, Ibrahim, has been detained for questioning.

RAB officials say a man named Azad, who identified himself as a garment worker, had rented the house two months ago.

A local resident, however, told bdnews24.com that one of the residents of the house told him a few days ago that the house will be used as the offices for a nongovernmental ogranisation or NGO.

After interrogating operatives of the JMB's Tamim-Sarwar faction in late April, the security forces came to know several units were active in parts of the country, senior RAB officer Khan said.

During a RAB raid on Oct 8 last year on a building in Ashulia, a man died after falling from the fourth floor.

RAB later identified him as Sarwar Jahan, who used Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif as an alias, and regrouped a faction of the JMB backed by Canadian-Bangladeshi Tamim Chowdhury.

Tamim and two other suspected militants were killed on Aug 27 last year during a gunfight in Narayanganj.

Security forces have been blaming this faction of the JMB behind the terrors attacks at an upscale restaurant in Dhaka's Gulshan and the Sholakia Eid congregation in Kishoreganj.

Police identify the faction as the 'Neo-JMB' while RAB describes it as the Sarwar-Tamim group.

During a short media briefing in Savar on Sunday, RAB spokesperson Khan said they received information on the house late on Saturday and immediately launched the raid.

Around 1am, a unit from the RAB-4, headed by Additional Deputy Inspector General Lutful Kabir, cordoned off the tin-roofed house.

Sensing security force's presence, the suspects opened fire around 3am, Kabir told bdnews24.com.

Another round of firing began around 6am and bombs were hurled from inside, prompting the RAB to retaliate, he said.

RAB asked the militants to surrender since the start of the raid, but the suspects retaliated with gunfire, according to senior RAB officer Kabir.

A team from the local police joined RAB in the morning when residents of nearby homes were evacuated.

The final preparation to launch assaults on the house started after the RAB's special force and bomb disposal unit arrived on the scene.

An armoured personnel carrier or APC was seen approaching the house around 9am with a helicopter hovering above.

The security forces then used loudspeakers and told the suspects inside that they will move in if they do not surrender by 12pm.

Around 11am, a sustained exchange of gunfire could be heard from the scene. An hour later, one of the men in the building surrendered.

"He told us that there were three more inside and confirmed that none of them were women or minors," RAB spokesperson Khan said.

The three others surrendered separately in the next one hour, he said.  "Our objective was to catch them alive,"

The bomb disposal unit entered the building after the suspects surrendered, said RAB-4 Company Commander Maj Abdul Hakim.

Later in the night, RAB Director Khan told bdnews24.com two foreign pistols, six cartridges, two magazines and a number of jihadi books were recovered from the scene.

He said members of RAB's forensic department have collected evidence, including some burnt electronic devices, from the house.

The bomb disposal unit conducted controlled explosions of three improvised explosive devices or IEDs found in the house, RAB-4 Operations Officer Arif Bin Jalil said.