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.
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Babul told The Associated Press that the missing men are sons of serving and retired government employees.
“Six bodies were initially thought to be of terrorists but later five of them have been identified by their parents…Evidence suggest they are militants”, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters at his office in Dhaka.
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. Previously, the only major terrorist attack to strike the country was a synchronised series of small explosions in August 2005, which hurt 100 people but killed only two. “They have no connections with the Islamic State”. Previous attacks involved machete-wielding men singling out individual activists, foreigners and religious minorities.
Five of the 13 hostages who were rescued when security forces stormed the restaurant are still being held for questioning by investigators – but it is not clear whether they are regarded as potential suspects or eyewitnesses.
He said the fifth youth who hailed from a village in northwestern Bogra and studied in a madrassa there led the attackers during the Friday night’s massacre.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met members of the victims families there, as well as the Italian and Japanese ambassadors.
Bangladeshi Internet newspaper bd24.com describes the backgrounds of three affluent students involved in the Dhaka attack.
This incident of children from the country’s upper classes joining the militant Islamists in such an act of brutality highlighted the fact that the radicalisation among the largely moderate Muslim population in Bangladesh has increased in recent years. Nine Italians, 7 Japanese, one American of Bangladeshi origin, and two Bangladeshis were also among the people who were killed.
Bangladesh police have said they are investigating whether the attackers had links to the Islamic State group, though the home minister insisted IS has no presence in Bangladesh and could not have guided the attack.
The hostages were asked to recite verses from the Qur’an, to prove themselves Muslim, according to a witness.
“We advise fellow citizens in Dhaka to be vigilant and to exercise maximum caution, especially in areas popular with foreigners”, Italy’s foreign ministry said in advice to travellers on its website. This assertion comes in the wake of the IS’s claim that it was responsible for this attack.
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During the ensuing gun battle, security officers fatally shot the militants and then discovered the mutilated bodies of 20 hostages.
