B’DESH HUNTS FOR ITS MISSING YOUTH TO HEAD OFF ATTACKS

Bangladesh’s prime minister urged parents whose children have gone missing to provide information after some of the militants who attacked a Dhaka cafe last week turned out to be young men who had broken contact with their well-to-do families.

Twenty people were killed in the attack when five Bangladeshi men stormed into the cafe.

Three of them attended prestigious schools or universities in Dhaka and Malaysia and had been reported missing from their homes for months. One was the son of a politician.

Police have not determined how the five men, who were from 19 to 26 years old, turned into coldblooded killers. They are also trying to identify those who orchestrated the attack, one of the worst in Bangladesh’s history.

In the investigation into another incident on Thursday, in which militants attacked police guarding one of the country’s biggest Eid gatherings, a missing university student was identified as a suspected terrorist killed during a shootout with police.

Acquaintances said the young attacker was Abir Rahman, a North South University (NSU) student who had been missing for the past eight months, Dhaka Tribune reported. Rahman was pursuing a BBA degree at NSU, the paper said. One of the suspects in the Dhaka cafe attack was also a student of NSU.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, battling escalating Islamist militancy, appealed for cooperation from parents whose children had left home without explanation.

“We have learned that many college and university students are missing. Don’t just file a GD, give us all the information and photos,” she said on Thursday. A GD is an initial police report.