Dead bodies of four militant suspects have been found at the end of police’s operation on a hideout in Chapainawabganj.
Published : 27 Apr 2017, 02:57 PM
Operation Eagle Hunt was officially called off after the recovery of the bodies on Thursday evening.
The suspects which included one Rafikul Alam Abu, 30, died in a blast caused by their own explosives, said Deputy Inspector General Khurshid Hossain of Rajshahi Range.
The identities of the three other individuals are still not known.
The woman and a girl child, Abu’s wife and daughter, were brought out of the one-storey house at Trimohini village of Shibganj Upazila that had been surrounded by police for two days.
“This operation was more successful than previous ones. We were able to bring out Abu’s wife and daughter alive,” said DIG Khurshid.
They were admitted at a hospital, he said. Police, he said, made repeated
appeals to the holed up suspects through loudspeakers to ensure safety of women and children.
The bomb disposal team has started working in the hideout.
Four including Abu, his wife and children lived in the house surrounded by mango trees, police said earlier. Abu’s other child is in his grandparent’s house.
Police assumed four people including women and children were inside when the raid began on Wednesday morning.
They resumed the siege at 9am on Thursday amid intermittent firing.
Around 10am, a loud explosion was heard and a bomb disposal squad was rushed to the site. At midday, the SWAT officers made the last appeal to the militants to surrender.
The police was later heard calling out to the militants over microphone, asking them one last time to surrender.
Police had prevented entry into areas about 500 yards around the building.
A grenade was lobbed from inside the building and a few loud explosions were heard around 9pm Wednesday night.
SWAT commandos were rushed by helicopter from Dhaka and they took up positions around the building at 6.40pm on Wednesday.
At least four people, including women and children, are believed to be holed out in the house, Assistant DC of Counter-terror unit Abdul Mannan had earlier said.
"But they have not responded to our calls over microphone."
Who is Abu?
Jentu Biswas, 75, who owns the house in a mango orchard, lives with his family in another house nearby.
Locals said he let Abu and his family stay in the house without charging them rent three months ago.
Abu’s parents live in Chachra village, around half a kilometre from Trimohani.
His mother Fulsana Begum told reporters in the morning that Abu, a spice hawker by profession, had two daughters. They are 8 and 6 years old.
Fulsana said Abu, who studied in a local madrassa, had been staying in his in-laws’ house at Abbas Bazar in the same Upazila since marrying Sumaiya Khatun nine years ago.
Abu was the eldest of her two sons and one daughter.
Before cordoning off the house at Trimohoni, police surrounded and raided three other houses in Abbas Bazar. No one was arrested in the raid, police said.
Recent raids in the Chittagong and Sylhet divisions were followed by an operation on a home in Jhenaidah last Friday. Police say they recovered ‘huge explosives and bomb-making materials’ in the raid.
Another operation was conducted in Rajshahi on Tuesday, but police found no militant there.