The chief of the terror group blamed for Bangladesh's worst terror attack at a Dhaka cafe was among the four Islamist militants killed in one of the country's longest anti-terror operations in Sylhet, police said on Tuesday.
13 of the 17 militants who were presumed to have plotted the attack were killed in encounters so far, said police.
Security forces in the past 10 days have witnessed four major anti-militancy assaults against Islamic-State inclined Neo-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh in which seven people including an army lieutenant colonel and two police inspectors lost their lives while the assaults killed 15 militants and their children.
A woman and a teenage boy on Saturday blew themselves up in Dhaka when Bangladesh police's elite counter-terrorism unit raided a three-storey building where heavily-armed militants, belonging to an Islamist group blamed for the deadly cafe attack, were hiding.
Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury and dismissed army officer Syed Md Ziaul Haque have been identified as the brains behind the two terror attacks.
Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen's wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marjan and another unidentified extremist were killed by Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital.
Sheikh Hasina's government has launched a relentless war against terrorism since the Dhaka cafe carnage in July 2016, but as Bangladesh's terror networks exploit new technologies and new tactics, the challenge to eliminate jihad gets tougher, points out Binodkumar Singh.
Hoque said he alerted the chiefs of NIA and CBI against Chowdhury.
Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime chief Monirul Islam said they got information that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh chief Musa along with some other JMB terrorists are in Sylhet.
The terrorist was killed during a raid on a house in Dhaka's Rupnagar area and was identified by police as top Neo-Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh leader Chowdhury's 'second-in-command'.
Six people including two police officers were killed in twin blasts. The dead included two police inspectors and four onlookers, two of them being college students.
Of the four terrorists, two including a woman were killed on Monday. The bodies of the female terrorist and one man were handed over to police but two others were inside as they were wired or surrounded by explosives.
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