Caught bomber chooses death

Dhaka – An Islamist extremist was killed yesterday in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka after detonating a suicide vest and other explosives as police prepared to raid his hotel room, an official said.

The blast, on the third floor of a hotel in the city centre, sent police running for cover and showered the streets below in rubble.

National police chief AKM Shahidul Hoque said the deceased was a foot soldier from Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh – a local militant outfit blamed for the massacre of 22 hostages at a cafe in Dhaka last year.

“He was carrying bombs and a suicide vest. The door was blown off in one explosion, and he died in the second explosion,” he said.

The incident came as Bangladesh marked an annual national day of mourning to commemorate the assassination of the nation’s founding leader and secular icon, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in a military coup in 1975.

Bangladesh is now ruled by Sheikh Mujibur’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, who has ordered a bloody crackdown on Islamist extremist networks that has left nearly 70 suspected militants dead.

Hasina, along with Bangladesh’s president and other dignitaries, was paying tribute to her father at a memorial just a few hundred metres from the hotel where the extremist detonated his vest. –