DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A Canadian man suspected of having planned a July attack on a bakery in Dhaka that left 20 people dead was killed in a shootout with the Bangladeshi police Saturday, officials said.
The man, Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, a 30-year-old Canadian citizen of Bangladeshi descent, was one of three militants killed in the raid outside Dhaka, the capital, the officials said.
Bangladeshi authorities have said Chowdhury planned the July 1 assault on the Holey Artisan Bakery, a restaurant popular with expatriates and middle-class Bangladeshis.
Some analysts believe Chowdhury acted as a coordinator for the Islamic State militant group in Bangladesh and northeastern India. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in Bangladesh, including the attack at the bakery.
Bangladeshi police, however, identified Chowdhury as the leader of a new branch of a domestic terrorist group, the Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, and the government initially denied that the bakery attack had been carried out by members of foreign groups.
Later, officials acknowledged that the attackers might have had links to such groups, including the Islamic State.
The shootout Saturday morning took place at a two-story house in the Narayanganj district near Dhaka after police received a tip that the militants were hiding there, top counterterrorism official Monirul Islam said.
They were given a chance to surrender but attacked the police with guns and grenades, at which point the police opened fire, said police Inspector General A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque, in televised comments to reporters Saturday. Both officials said Chowdhury was among the militants killed.
Police said they found guns, ammunition and meat cleavers in the apartment where the men were holed up. The men also set off explosions to destroy their computers and other evidence, said Sanwar Hossain, a senior police officer.
"We heard explosions inside the apartment and we understood that they were destroying evidence," Hossain said. "When we felt that they would not surrender, we made our final push and killed them."
The police had offered cash bounties of about $25,000 this month for information leading to the arrest of Chowdhury and for another militant, Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque, who was suspected of being involved in recent killings of secular writers.
Chowdhury's name was on a list of 10 high-value suspects released by Bangladeshi authorities last month after the Holey Artisan Bakery attack, an 11-hour siege carried out by a handful of militants who were eventually killed by soldiers. Analysts said Chowdhury and two other Bangladeshi expatriates on that list could have been acting as links between local and international extremist groups.
The bakery siege was the deadliest in a series of violent attacks carried out by Islamist militants in Bangladesh over the past several years. The frequency of those attacks has increased in recent months.
Officials said they suspected Chowdhury was also behind a July 7 bombing at Bangladesh's largest prayer gathering for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which killed four people: two police officers, a civilian and a militant.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Saturday in televised remarks to reporters that the identities of the two militants killed with Chowdhury would be released after an investigation, but that one of them appeared to be Chowdhury's right-hand man.
It was not clear whether either of the two militants killed with Chowdhury was on the list of high-value suspects released last month.
"We think Tamim Chowdhury's chapter has ended here," Khan said. "We will be able to catch the rest of the militants soon."
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/28/2016