DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladesh security forces on Monday killed at least two people suspected of belonging to a militant group behind a deadly cafe attack in Dhaka in 2016, police said after a raid at a tin-shed hideout in the capital.
Police cordoned off the area after receiving information about the presence of suspected members of Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, a home-grown militant group that killed 22 people in the cafe attack.
“When our forces knocked on the door, the residents of the house fired at our people instead of opening it,” Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of the legal and media wing of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), told reporters. “Then members of the RAB responded. There is still huge amount of explosives and our special force are trying to remove it.”
Khan said three people, including the owner of the house, had been detained for questioning.
Bangladesh launched a crackdown on militancy after the cafe attack as part of what Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina calls a “zero tolerance” policy.
Militants attacked the cafe in July 2016, taking 22 hostages, mostly foreigners, who were killed over 12 hours.
Bangladesh kills two suspects linked to 2016 Dhaka cafe attack
Bangladesh kills two suspects linked to 2016 Dhaka cafe attack
- Bangladeshi police said they are still trying to remove the huge number of explosives in the house
- The café attack in Dhaka killed 22 people
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
