Attackers take hostages at Bangladesh restaurant

“It is with pained sadness that I write to tell you of the death of Abinta Kabir, an Emory student at Oxford College”.

But, 20-year-old Abinta Kabir, whose is daughter to Manzur and Nilu Murshed of Lavender, a super store in Gulshan, is said to be a Bangladeshi American national by the families.

Twenty people have been killed after gunmen took dozens of hostages at a restaurant in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka.

The other was Faraaz Hossain, of Dhaka, a junior at Emory’s Goizueta Business School in Atlanta.

– A group of as many as nine gunmen attacked a restaurant popular with foreigners in a diplomatic zone of the Bangladeshi capital on Friday night, taking hostages and exchanging gunfire with security forces, authorities said.

Two students, both attending Emory University in Georgia, were also killed in the attack, according to NBC.

Lt. Col. Tuhin Mohammad Masud, the commanding officer of Bangladeshi commandos, said at least six of the gunman had been killed and 13 hostages rescued.

Sumon Reza, a kitchen staffer who was among more than 10 people who managed to run to the rooftop and escape, said the attackers chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) as they launched the attack around 9:20 p.m. Friday, initially opening fire with blanks.

One assailant has been held by the security forces.

Details of the stand-off are from Associated Press reports. Others crouched under chairs and tables as the gunmen fired indiscriminately, witnesses said. Thirteen hostages were rescued, authorities said.

The attack came during Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast during the day and eat after dark. Most of the dead were people who were visiting or temporarily working in Bangladesh. Till now six terrorists were believed to be killed, while one has been arrested.

“These people are those who worked hard for the development of Bangladesh, and so this is the utmost sorrow”, he said in a brief statement to reporters after nightfall in Tokyo.

He added that they later tried to connect with her, but the call went unanswered.

Images posted by the Islamic State group as they claimed the attack showed two bodies soaked in pools of crimson.

– In January 2015, the Islamic State group killed two Japanese men in a hostage drama in Syria that gripped Japan for 11 days.

It was an extremely heinous act.

Amaq also said 24 people had been killed and 40 injured, some of them foreigners, in the attack.

The Prime Minister said her “government will do everything to uproot the militants and violent extremists in the country” as she asked people to resist these terrorists.

The government did not directly comment on the IS claim of responsibility but has denied in the past that the extremist group based in Syria and Iraq has a presence in Bangladesh, instead blaming the recent attacks on its political enemies.

Islamic State said it was responsible for one of the most brazen attacks in the South Asian nation’s history, but that claim has yet to be confirmed. “They talked about the fact that they were going to carry out more attacks, they were going to increase the tempo, and they were calling for volunteers from Bangladesh to join them”. The Muslim-majority Bangladesh has witnessed a wave of deadly attacks on religious minorities and secular bloggers by suspected Islamist militants.