“Let me clear it again, there is no ISIS or al Qaeda presence or existence in Bangladesh. the hostage-takers were all home-grown terrorists not members of ISIS or any other worldwide Islamist outfits”, home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.
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Islamist militants killed 20 people, including at least nine Italians, seven Japanese and an American, inside an upmarket restaurant in Bangladesh’s capital, before security forces stormed the building and ended a 12-hour standoff on Saturday.
Hostages who were killed include 19-year-old Indian girl Tarushi Jain.
“Islamic State commandos attack a restaurant frequented by foreigners in the city of Dhaka in Bangladesh”, Amaq, an information outlet linked to ISIS, said Friday.
The Islamic State (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place on the eve of one of the holiest nights in the Islamic calendar.
The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for the attack. The Bangladeshi captives who were able to do so were provided meals overnight, it said.
“The gunmen asked everyone inside to recite from the Quran”, Rezaul Karim told the Associated Press, describing what his son, Hasnat, had witnessed inside the restaurant.
Hossain Toufique Imam, the political advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said that the way in which the hostages were killed with machetes suggests the role of a local terrorist group, the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.
The businessman, Gianni Boschetti, had just received a phone call and stepped into the restaurant’s garden to talk when the attack began.
He said the militants were mostly educated and from rich families, but declined to give any more details.
Police were also looking into whether the Dhaka assault was part of, or inspired by a series of attacks elsewhere in the world including on Istanbul airport last month, he added. One of Akhond’s friends, the celebrated musician Maqsoodul Haque, said: “She died yesterday because some of her friends came from overseas and, typical of her, she took them out for dinner”.
It was not immediately clear whether the attackers had a specific goal, and Bangladesh authorities would not say if they had made any demands.
The restaurant opened two years ago in the plush and heavily secured Gulshan diplomatic neighbourhood of the Bangladeshi capital, which is home to several embassies and an global school.
Numerous 20 people killed by the group of seven militants in the Holey Artisan Bakery were foreigners who had been deliberately singled out and hacked to death with knives.
“The terrorists used sharp weapons to kill them brutally”, Brig.
They ordered all Bangladeshis to stand up before they began killing foreigners, a source briefed on the investigation said.
Bangladeshi commandoes stormed the building and killed six of the attackers when attempts at negotiations proved fruitless, authorities said. It posted photos of what it said were dead foreigners killed in the assault. By the end, 13 people had been rescued and 20 were dead, officials said. They however allowed Faraaz to go.
The killing of foreigners will likely shatter the confidence of the expatriate community in Bangladesh, many of whom work for multinationals in the country’s $26 billion garment industry that accounts for around 15 percent of the economy. Seven gunmen armed with blades, guns and bombs also murdered two Bangladesh police officers.
The government did not directly comment on the IS claim but has denied in the past that the extremist group has a presence in Bangladesh.
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Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority and highly populous country, has been hit by Islamist-style targeted attacks since 2013, but no large terrorist attacks in the past decade. The al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which is also active in Bangladesh and primarily target progressive and anti-Islam intellectuals, hailed the attack on its social media platforms.
