The 12-hour-long hostage crisis at the cafe popular with foreigners ended after a two-hour long assault by armed forces’ commandos killing six gunmen. During the call, Kerry condoled the loss of innocent lives at the hands of terrorists “who threaten the United States, Bangladesh and the global community”.
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A senior minister in Bangladesh claims the attackers were members of a homegrown Bangladeshi jihadist outfit.
Whoever was responsible, the attack marked a major escalation in violence by militants who have demanded Islamic rule in Bangladesh, whose 160 million people are mostly Muslim.
Bangladeshi security experts said the seven terrorists, stayed on inside the Holey Artisan Bakery well after they had killed all the hostages shortly after they stormed the eatery Friday night, making no attempt to escape, despite the fact that there was little or no security around the restaurant. “The sixth man was a restaurant employee”, a top police official investigating the attack said. Two of the other terrorists were also students at Scholastica.
SITE identified the five attackers as Abu Umayer, Abu Salam, Abu Rahiq, Abu Muslim, and Abu Muharib, while police, who released photos of the attackers” bodies, said their names were “Akash”, “Bikash, ‘ “Don, ‘ ‘Badhon” and ‘Ripon’.
The men, all in their late teens or early 20s, were products of Bangladesh’s elite, several having attended one of the country’s top English-medium private schools as well as universities both in the country and overseas.
Some of the men went to an elite public school in Dhaka, Scholastic, and then college at North South University in the capital and Monash University in Malaysia, according to the posts.
“We are trying to arrest them because they could be the mastermind”, Mr Islam said.
Among the mourners at the ceremony in a Dhaka stadium was Muksedur Rahman who described slain Italian textile trader Nadia Benedetti as a “great human being” who had worked to help Bangladeshi survivors of acid attacks. The pontiff has led tens of thousands of pilgrims, tourists and Romans in silent prayer for the dozens of people who perished in militant attacks on a Dhaka, Bangladesh, restaurant and two bombings in Baghdad. Numerous terrorists were reported missing by their families in the months prior to the attack. Kishida said later that the cruel act of terrorism had taken precious lives.
“A majority of the boys who attacked the restaurant came from very good educational institutions”.
Nine Italians, seven Japanese, three Bangladeshis and one Indian teenager were held hostage and killed.
The Amaq news agency, affiliated with the Islamic State, published photos of five smiling young men, each holding what appear to be rifles and posing in front of a black Islamic State flag, and identified them as the restaurant attackers, according to the Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Service, which monitors jihadis’ online activity.
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Odhikar, a leading Bangladeshi human rights group, issued a statement Tuesday saying “that a regime that denies human rights of its citizens, [gags] freedom of speech… and does not cease torture, extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances… will inevitably trigger a counter-reaction”.
