Two ‘extremists’ killed, child rescued, four surrender

Two suspected extremists were killed, a four-year girl was rescued and four people were held on surrender during a raid at a suspected den of extremists at a house at Ashkona in Dhaka on Saturday.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police officials said that one of the deceased, a teenage, was son of banker Tanvir Quaderi, who ‘committed suicide’ during a raid at Azimpur house in Dhaka on September 10, while the other was the wife of suspected extremist Sumon.
They, however, said that they were trying to confirm the exact identities of the deceased.
The police officials said that they rescued the minor girl injured from the scene during the operation at the ground floor of three-storey Surja Villa on Mosque Road of Ashekona Purba Para, cordoned by the security forces.
Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crimes unit chief Monirul Islam of the metropolitan police said that four people – Jebunnesa, the widow of suspected extremist retired army major Jahidul Islam who was killed in an operation at Rupnagar in Dhaka on September 2, and their child, suspected extremist Musa’s wife Trisha and their child – surrendered to the police responding to their call at about 9:00am.
The law enforcers also seized a pistol, six bullets and explosives from the four, he said.
Monirul said that the two deceased and the four detained were operatives of a faction of extremist outfit Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.
He said that the arrested four were taken to Detective Branch for interrogation. 
The police employed huge firearms and tactical forces in the 14-hour-long drive, Operation Ripple 24, beginning at 2:00am about one kilometre and a half from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan went to the spot at about 3:20pm to announce the operation closed at 3:40pm.
Police were trying to capture all of the suspects alive, he said, adding that counter-terrorism unit members, on secret information that extremist Musa and his associates were staying at the house, cordoned it early Saturday and asked the suspects to surrender.
At one stage in the morning, four people surrendered to the police and informed that three others were at the apartment, he said, adding that police later repeatedly asked them to surrender.
At about noon, a woman in veil and a child in her lap, pretending to surrender, came out of the apartment.
As soon as police asked her to raise her hands, she tried to bring something out of her waist and exploded a ‘grenade’, fell on the ground, leaving herself killed and the child injured, the minister said.
Police rescued the girl and rushed her to paediatric surgery unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital in critical condition.
Later, the teenage opened fire and hurled grenade to police, who retaliated by firing and the boy died, Asaduzzaman said.
The minister said that Musa, however, managed to flee.
He expected that Musa would be detained soon as the anti-extremist drive was on.
Inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque was also present with the minister.
Earlier, the metropolitan commissioner Md Asaduzzaman Mia told reporters on the spot that huge grenades and explosives were stored in the apartment and they would search them on completion of the operation.
Police officials, however, said that the bomb disposal unit of the metropolitan police and crime scene management team of the Criminal Investigation Department would jointly search the apartment today.
Dakhkhinkhan police station sub-inspector Sujan Haque took the body of Musa’s wife, 28, to Dhaka Medical College morgue at about 10:30pm for autopsy.
At about 2:45pm, gunshot and explosions could be heard from the building. Police officials said that it was fire exchange between police and the teenage boy in which the boy was killed.
House owner Jamal Uddin’s daughter Jonaki Rasel told reporters that her father was a middle-east expatriate and the apartment was rented by one Imtiaz Ahmed, who claimed to be an online businessman, four months ago.
Abu Saleh, a resident of the building next to Surja Villa, said that they used to see the doors and windows of the ground-floor apartment shut all the time.
He said that he was not at home at night and could not enter his house as police cordoned the area.
‘My family has been passing the whole time anxiously,’ he added.
Local people said that a huge number of police came to the area midnight past Friday and called inmates of at least three houses, including Surja Villa.
Later police kept Surja villa cordoned and, since early morning, they urged the ‘extremists’ to surrender using loud speaker.
Police barred traffic Ashkona Haji camp area, about one kilometre from the spot.
Following the extremist attack on a Gulshan café in Dhaka on July 1 and a police checkpoint at Sholakia in Kishoreganj on July 7, law enforcing agencies raided at least eight suspected extremist dens at places of Dhaka, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Tangail.
At least 28 suspected ‘extremists,’ all belonging to a JMB faction, were killed in the operations.

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