Two civilians and a police officer were killed in explosions in Bangladesh on Saturday as troops raided a building believed to be a hide-out for militants in the eastern part of the country, the police said.

Twenty-five people were wounded in the explosions, which took place on a road near an Islamic religious school, said Golam Kibria, a senior police official in the city of Sylhet.

Since Friday, paramilitary troops have been engaged in an operation to flush out a group of Islamist radicals holed up in a nearby building with a large cache of ammunition.

The police said that earlier Saturday, 78 civilians were rescued from the building as soldiers broke through a boundary wall.

Troops and militants continued to exchange gunfire late Saturday.

The gunbattle erupted a day after a man detonated his explosives near a police post on a busy road near the airport in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. No one other than the attacker was killed or wounded in that explosion.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, citing the Islamic State news agency Amaq. SITE monitors the activity of terrorist groups online.

Read more:  New York Times