DHAKA: Bangladesh troops fired at suspected insurgents in the country’s restive Chittagong Hill Tracts in the southeast, leaving at least five people dead on Saturday, police said.

Police said the gunfight occurred in a remote place called Boradom where army troops raided a den of suspected members of Jana Sanghati Samiti (M.N. Larma).

“There was an exchange of fires between the army troops and suspected members JSS M. N. Larma in the morning. Five members of the group were killed”, local police chief Zakir Hossain said.

The JSS M.N. Larma is an offshoot of a former rebel group which fought a decades-long battle for a tribal homeland in the Chittagong Hill Tracts before signing a peace deal with the government in 1997.

Police said troops seized at least seven firearms in the raid. There was no immediate comment from the army or the insurgents.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2015

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