Police say six of the attackers were killed in “Operation Thunderbolt” carried out the next morning to end a 12-hour hostage crisis at O’ Kitchen.IS’ Amaq news agency released the photos of five of their members several hours after the attack broke claiming responsibilities. “We are trying to arrest them because they could be the mastermind”, Saiful Islam, a senior police officer involved in the investigation, told Reuters.
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Speaking both Bengali and English, the man in the video said Bangladesh must know that it was now part of a bigger battlefield to establish the cross-border “caliphate”, proclaimed by the group in 2014.
The video comes days after Islamist gunmen stormed a popular restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic enclave late on Friday and killed 22 people, majority foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the USA in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. “You can not stop this jihad until we come victorious defeating you, and the caliphate is established across the world”, said the man. Prime Minister Hasina’s government has blamed a string of attacks in the country on her political foes, saying they back militant groups in the country in an attempt to create chaos.
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. In those cases, Bangladesh government officials denied that the killings are the work of Islamic terrorists, but said they were anxious that they will hurt the garment business and the image of the country.
Meanwhile, as the probe to the Dhaka terror attack continues, police here said that it had shot dead the pizza chef of the restaurant, mistakenly thinking he was one of the militants.
Nine of the victims were Italian, seven Japanese, one Indian, two Bangladeshi and one American.
Police have eight people in custody, including one described as an attacker, but no one has been formally arrested as a suspect.
A United Nations spokesman said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hopes those behind the attack will be brought to justice and that regional and global efforts to prevent and fight terrorism must be intensified.
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Bangladesh has seen a number of attacks in recent months, mostly targeting secular bloggers, atheists and religious minorities. IS terrorists and al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS) have claimed responsibility for numerous attacks. Umar is believed to be based in Pakistan, but was born in India in the mid-1970s.
