20 hostages dead, 13 freed in Bangladesh
3 students from U.S. universities among victims
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The hostages were given a test: recite verses from the Quran, or be punished, according to a witness. Those who passed were allowed to eat. Those who failed were tortured and killed.
The 10-hour hostage crisis that gripped Bangladesh’s diplomatic zone ended Saturday morning with 20 captives dead as commandos raided the restaurant where gunmen were holding dozens of foreigners and Bangladeshis prisoner while tossing bombs and engaging in a gunbattle with security forces.
The commandos killed six of the attackers.
Authorities were interrogating one of the attackers captured.
Two police officers were fatally shot by assailants at the start of the raid Friday night.
The 20 hostages killed included nine Italians, seven Japanese, three Bangladeshis and one Indian, government sources said, as details of the bloodshed began trickling from other capitals worldwide.
Three students from U.S. universities were among the victims, university and foreign officials confirmed.
The students were identified as Tarishi Jain, 19, of the University of California at Berkeley; Abinta Kabir, of Miami, a sophomore at Emory University’s Oxford, Ga., campus; and Faraaz Hossain, of Dhaka, a junior at Emory’s Goizueta Business School in Atlanta.
The White House confirmed Saturday that a U.S. citizen was among the hostages killed.
Jain had been working on e-commerce growth at Eastern Bank Limited in Dhaka through an internship with a university center for Bangladeshi studies, which began in early June, university officials said. Her father was a textile merchant based in Dhaka.
“We are all very devastated to hear the news about Tarishi Jain. She was a smart and ambitious young woman with a big heart,” Sanchita Saxena, executive director of the Institute for South Asia Studies and director of the Center for Bangladesh Studies, said in a statement released by the university Saturday.
Emory University President James Wagner posted on the school’s website: “The Emory community mourns this tragic and senseless loss of two members of our university family. Our thoughts and prayers go out on behalf of Faraaz and Abinta and their families and friends for strength and peace at this unspeakably sad time.”
Ten of the 26 people who were wounded Friday night when the militants opened fire were in critical condition, and six were on life support, according to hospital staffers.
The attack marked an escalation in militant violence against the traditionally moderate Muslim-majority nation in recent months, with extremists demanding the secular government revert to Islamic rule.
Most previous attacks have involved machete-wielding men singling out individual activists, foreigners and religious minorities.
But Friday night’s attack was different, more coordinated, with the attackers brandishing assault rifles as they shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) and stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan area.
Dozens of foreigners and Bangladeshis were dining out at the restaurant during the Ramadan holy month.
The gunmen, initially firing blanks, ordered restaurant workers to switch off the lights, and they draped black cloths over closed-circuit cameras, according to a survivor, who spoke with local TV channel ATN News. He and others, including kitchen staff, escaped by running to the rooftop or out the back door.
About 35 were trapped inside, their fate depending on whether they could prove themselves to be Muslims, according to the father of a Bangladeshi businessman who was rescued Saturday along with his family.
One Bangladeshi witness said the attackers told him: “You people don’t have to be afraid; we came here to kill the non-Muslims.”
Detectives were questioning survivors as part of the investigation Saturday, as details of the siege emerged.
It was not clear whether the attackers had a specific goal, and authorities would not say if they had made any demands.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, saying it targeted the citizens of “Crusader countries” in the attack, warning that citizens of such countries would not be safe “as long as their warplanes kill Muslims.”