Three suspected militants have been killed in an exchange of fire during a raid by security forces in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, police said on Friday.
Benazir Ahmed, head of the crime-busting Rapid Action Battalion, said the bodies of the suspects were found on the fourth floor of a residential building after the gunfight in the city’s Tejgaon area.
Ahmed said the raid was conducted based on intelligence information that suspects had been using the building as one of their hideouts to carry out acts of sabotage.
The building is less than a kilometre from the prime minister’s office.
“Police found a suicide vest, improvised explosive devices and a firearm at the scene,’’ Mufti Mahmud Khan, spokesman of the battalion, said without giving any details about the suspects’ identity.
Khan said that the militants fired bullets and threw grenades on the lawmen as they cordoned off the building early in the morning.
He added that the lawmen retaliated with bullets.
Local residents said they woke up hearing sounds of heavy gunfire.
Bangladesh launched a series of anti-militant raids in response to an attack carried out by Islamist militants on a popular cafe in Dhaka that left 22 civilians dead, including 17 foreigners, in July 2016.
Dozens of suspected militants were killed in those raids.
