Bangladeshi police shot dead an Islamist extremist accused of being one of the masterminds of last year's deadly siege at a cafe during a pre-dawn raid in Dhaka Friday.The bodies of Nurul Islam Marzan and another man said to have been behind the murder of a Japanese national in 2015 were found after officers raided a property in the capital's Rayer Bazar neighbourhood, police said.

"Marzan and his associate Saddam (Hossain) died in an encounter with police," Inspector General of Police A.K.M Shahidul Haque told AFP. "He (Marzan) was the operational commander of the July cafe attack. He was one of the masterminds of it." Additional deputy commissioner Yusuf Ali told AFP police had found the body of another "suspected extremist" alongside Marzan. Ali said that Marzan was "one of the masterminds" of the siege at the upmarket Holey Artisan Bakery on July 1 last year in which 18 foreign hostages were shot or hacked to death.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017