Bangladesh army troops exchanged gunfire with suspected tribal rebels believed to have kidnapped a Bangladeshi man working for a Danish aid agency, police said on Friday. They said the shootout occurred on Thursday night in a densely forested area in Bandarban hill district in the country’s remote southeast. Danida staffer Suman Sharif was kidnapped along with his driver on June 25 at a village near Thanchi, some 400 km southeast of the capital Dhaka. The motive was unknown. The kidnappers released the driver three days later at a remote forest near Thanchi township. “Troops surrounded an area in the deep forests following (intelligence) reports that the abductors of Suman Sharif might have taken shelter there,” one police officer said. “The suspected rebels opened fire on troops who also returned the fire. Some 200 bullets were exchanged over an hour, in which troops captured a suspect.” A Danish government security official was assisting Bangladeshi authorities in the search in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, scene of a 25-year tribal insurgency that officially ended in 1997.