Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims and people from all walks of life also poured in to pay their last tribute at scene.
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If the Dhaka attackers did self-radicalize online, they would fit a pattern of relatively non-religious or secular ISIS recruits such as Mohammed Emzawi – the ISIS executioner known as “Jihadi John” – and Tahla Asmal, a 17-year-old teen whose parents had no idea he had joined the militant group until ISIS posted a photo of him online.
Dhaka: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday led the nation in mourning the 22 Dhaka siege victims, including an Indian girl, at a solemn ceremony here as the country paid a tearful homage to those killed in the worst terror attack on its soil.
“A majority of the boys who attacked the restaurant came from very good educational institutions”.
Bangladesh security forces have killed militants and saved hostages in a deadly standoff. But 20 hostages have died.
Nine Italians and seven Japanese were among the dead. Relatives of the dead, many weeping or clutching loved ones, approached the coffins to bid farewell as President Sergio Mattarella and Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni stood by.
One of the hostages, trapped by gunmen, at a Dhaka restaurant on July 1 may have been shot dead by police after authorities mistook him for an attacker, United States media reported on Tuesday.
In another sign of its growing interest in Bangladesh, ISIS recently published a five-page article titled, “The Revival of Jihad in Bengal”, in its flagship magazine Dabiq, which warned of further attacks against Westerners in Bangladesh. The officer declined to give details and spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
It was not clear if all five were suspects, or if they were being held and questioned simply because authorities thought they might offer useful information in tracing the origins of the attack.
The official confirmed investigators were speaking with a man described by local media as a Bangladeshi who was trapped inside the restaurant along with his wife and two children.
On a “confessions” Facebook page for Monash University students, one anonymous admirer gushed in a post on October 11, that year: “Nibras Islam!”
Some photographs and several crude videos taken from an apartment near the Holey Artisan Bakery show the man talking to someone while attackers allowed him to leave before paramilitary forces launched the rescue operation on Saturday.
Former classmates recognised one of the attackers as Nibras Islam, the son of a Dhaka businessman who was educated at an expensive Dhaka school teaching a Western curriculum and briefly studied at the Malaysia campus of Australia’s Monash University.
That the attackers targeted a popular restaurant in the heart of the diplomatic quarter of Bangladesh’s capital signaled a shift in militant tactics.
Friends and family have begun to identify the men Islamic State media say were responsible for the lethal attack on an upscale cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday.
The attack marked a major escalation in the scale and brutality of violence aimed at forcing strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, whose 160 million people are mostly Muslim. As the attack unfolded, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility.
They included nine Italians, seven Japanese, a USA citizen and a 19-year-old Indian student.
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Foreign diplomats offer their tribute to the victims of the attack.
