{UAH} Bangladesh mourns victims of Dhaka cafe attack

Bangladesh mourns victims of Dhaka cafe attack
•3 July 2016
Sanjoy Majumdar reports

: "Foreigners were isolated and then singled out"

Bangladesh has declared two days of national mourning for those killed
when Islamic militants stormed a cafe in the capital, Dhaka.

Twenty hostages, most of them foreign, were killed in the attack. Two
police officers also died and 30 were injured.

Bangladeshi commandos rescued 13 people after a 12-hour siege, killing
six gunmen and arresting another.

Nine Italians, seven Japanese, one US citizen and an Indian were among
the dead. One Italian is unaccounted for.

Bangladesh's home minister said on Sunday that the attackers were not
from the so-called Islamic State group, but belonged to a local
militant group, which has been banned for more than a decade.

"They are members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh," Asaduzzaman
Khan told the AFP news agency. "They have no connections with the
Islamic State."

IS had earlier released photographs of the alleged attackers posing in
front of a black IS flag.

Meanwhile, fresh accounts from survivors have emerged.

Bangladesh at crossroads as violence hits

Is extremism on the rise in Bangladesh?

Argentine chef Diego Rossini told how the gunmen burst into the Holey
Artisan Bakery on Friday evening with bombs and machine guns.

"I can't still believe this happened," he said.

"It was like a movie, they pointed their guns at me and I could hear
shots passing by. I was very, very afraid."

He said he escaped by running to the cafe terrace and jumping on to
another building.


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Who are the victims?
Nine Italians named by the Italian foreign ministry as: Cristian
Rossi; Marco Tondat; Nadia Benedetti; Adele Puglisi; Simona Monti;
Claudia Maria D'Antona; Vincenzo D'Allestro; Maria Rivoli and Claudio
Cappelli

Seven Japanese. Five men and two women, four of whose names have been
released by Japanese officials: Koyo Ogasawara, Makoto Okamura, Yuko
Sakai and Rui Shimodaira

Two Bangladeshis named in national media as Faraaz Ayaaz Hossai, a
student at Emory University in the US, and Ishrat Akhond

US citizen Abinta Kabir, also a student at Emory University

One Indian Tarishi Jain, 18, who was a student at the University of
California, Berkeley

More about the victims


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Who were the attackers? By Sanjoy Majumder, BBC News, Dhaka
A profile is now emerging of the attackers - six of them now dead, one
in the custody of the authorities and being interrogated.

They are said to belong to well-to-do families and studied in private
schools and universities, not in Islamic seminaries or madrassas,
where many Islamist militant groups are thought to draw recruits.

Social media is now buzzing with former classmates who have recognised
some of the attackers from the pictures put out by the so-called
Islamic State.

Meanwhile, extra police checkpoints have sprung up across Gulshan, the
upscale diplomatic neighbourhood where the Holey Café is located, as
much of Dhaka has now been placed on alert. But many Bangladeshis feel
it's a little too late, and they are wondering how a group of heavily
armed men were able to walk into the café on Friday evening,
unchecked.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If this bears out, it means that the Islamist violence that Bangladesh
has experienced over the past few years has taken a new, deadlier
dimension.

Announcing the two days of national mourning, Bangladeshi Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina vowed to fight terror attacks in the country.

"Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such acts," she said. "They
do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism."

The SITE Intelligence Group said the images released by IS identified
the attackers by noms-de-guerre indicating they were Bangladeshi.

A statement on IS's self-styled Amaq news agency said militants had
attacked a restaurant "frequented by foreigners".

Bangladesh has recently suffered a spate of murders of secular
bloggers, gay activists, academics and members of religious
minorities, blamed on Islamist militants.

•Bangladesh siege: Country at a crossroads as violence hits Dhaka
2 July 2016
•Is violent extremism on the rise in Bangladesh?
5 May 2016
•Bangladesh: Lurching from secularism to sectarian terror?
1 December 2015
•Bangladesh profile - Overview
1 December 2015

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