Bangla kills all militants after four days’ siege

Dhaka, March 27: Bangladesh Army on Monday said it has neutralised all four Islamist militants, including a woman, who were holed up in a building after four days of siege in the northeastern Sylhet city, even as the ‘Operation Twilight’ continued to secure the site.

“We’ve found four bodies inside the building. All are with suicide vests,” Brig General Mohammad Fakhrul Ahsan said at a news briefing at the end of the fourth day of the security siege of the five-storey building ‘Atia Mahal’.

“Our intelligence earlier suggested four militants, one being a woman, were inside the building...So we assume that no militant was alive anymore,” Ahsan said.

He, however, said the ‘Operation Twilight’ has not ended. The army is planning how to recover the bodies of the militants from the building, he said.

Ten persons, including four militants, have been killed in the operation that lasted for four days in this city, about 236 km from the capital Dhaka.

The identity of the slain militants were not established. However, officials had earlier indicated that Jamaat-ul- Mujahideen Bangladesh chief Musa could be inside the building. The neo-JMB, said to be inclined to the Islamic State, was behind the July 1 terror attack on a Dhaka cafe in which 22 people were killed.