People
carry an injured man near the Holey Artisan Bakery restaurant during an
attack by unidentified gunmen in Dhaka’s high-security diplomatic
district on July 2, 2016. © STR / AFP
Dhaka hostage standoff: At least 2 dead; ISIS claims responsibility
Dhaka, Bangladesh (CNN)
Armed terrorists have been holding as many
as 20 hostages at a cafe in a diplomatic zone of Bangladesh’s capital
for more than eight hours. The standoff followed a gunbattle with police
that left at least two senior officers dead and 40 people injured.
As police exchanged fire with the gunmen, the attackers threw explosives at officers, a source at the scene said.
Here’s the latest:
• At about 8:30 p.m.
local time Friday, gunmen attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery, a cafe
popular with expats. After they entered the restaurant, they took the
people inside hostage, cafe owner Sumon Reza told CNN. Reza said he
managed to escape as six to eight gunmen entered. About 20 people, some
of them foreigners, were in the restaurant.
• A police officer in charge of a nearby
station was shot dead, Maruf Hasan of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said. A
second officer died from gunshot wounds, Detective Police Deputy
Commissioner Sheikh Nazmul Alam told CNN.
• Alam said 40 people were wounded, some by gunshots and others by shrapnel from explosive devices.
• Ataur Rahman, who was in his office
about 200 meters from the restaurant, told CNN he went to the street as
he heard a series of gunshots. “I thought it might be an attack
somewhere nearby by local thugs.” He said people were racing for cover, saying gunmen were shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
• “We are trying to resolve this issue peacefully,” police official Gen. Benzir Ahmed told reporters.
• The Islamic State
(ISIS) has claimed a number of past attacks in Bangladesh through its
media affiliates, but the government has consistently denied any ISIS
presence in the country. Other attacks have been claimed by local
Islamist groups.
• Though there was the reported ISIS
claim of responsibility, the U.S. State Department said that cannot yet
be confirmed. Spokesman John Kirby said the State Department is
assessing information.
• A U.S. official familiar with
intelligence thinking told CNN’s Barbara Starr that based on past
operations, it is more likely that al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent
is conducting this attack — not ISIS. This is preliminary analysis — not
a conclusion — based on the best information available. The official
says AQIS has demonstrated a more capable presence in Dhaka over the
past few months than ISIS, and so far, all of its attacks in Bangladesh
have been in Dhaka.
• Witness Sharma Hussain told CNN that
her cousin has four friends who are in the restaurant. Hussain said the
hostages’ relatives have come to the scene but have received no word
from their family members. Hussain said she heard the gunshots from her
relatives’ home, about a five-minute walk from the restaurant.
She said the upscale neighborhood is
very secure and residents are surprised an attack happened there. Many
of the buildings sit behind walls, have gates in the driveway and
security guard booths.
• Police are trying to find out the
demands of the gunmen holding customers, an officer said. The gunmen had
not made any demands.
• Lori Ann Walsh Imdad, an American
teacher living in Dhaka, said she lives one block from the restaurant
and she heard gunshots. At first there was a burst of gunfire; after
that it was sporadic. There has not been any gunfire since, she said.
• Farzana Azim says she heard explosions
outside her home. “We heard the first bomb blast at 8:30 in the
evening,” Azim said. At first she thought it was the sound of a plane,
but a few minutes later another blast echoed through the neighborhood of
Gulshan. Within a half hour, the gunshots started, she said.
“I never thought something like this
could happen. It is next to a small hospital. This is family-friendly
restaurant. Everyone loves to go there,” the 49-year-old told CNN.
She said her husband and son had gone outside for the call to prayer and the attack happened shortly after that.
• Hussain said the restaurant is popular
among young people, who would have packed the restaurant about the time
of attack as they broke their fast for the day.
• Friday’s terror attack comes as the holy month of Ramadan, in which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, nears its end. Bangladesh is 89% Muslim, according to the CIA Factbook.
• The U.S. Embassy in Dhaka warned of
the situation on Twitter, advising people to shelter in place and noting
that a hostage situation had been reported. Later, the embassy advised
it had accounted for all of the American citizens working under the
chief of the mission authority.
• The embassy and many other diplomatic missions are less than 1.5 kilometers (.9 miles) from the cafe.
ISIS or al Qaeda?
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said he is unaware of an ISIS claim of responsibility that has been proven wrong.
Bergen
said he had talked to a counterterrorism official who thought ISIS was
to blame for the attack, and that was before the media arm made its
announcement. The official said al Qaeda typically doesn’t conduct operations with teams this large.
Philip Mudd, a former CIA
counterterrorism official and a CNN analyst, agreed with Bergen that
ISIS doesn’t issue false claims. He said he thinks they were quick to
take credit for the attack before al Qaeda could.
“As they compete, they want to get out
there in a place like Bangladesh right away before al Qaeda says
anything and they say this is us,” Mudd said.
ISIS and al Qaeda want to expand their
presence around the world, Bergen said. That includes taking homegrown
terror groups and making them affiliates.
Country has endured wave of killings
The attack came on the same day a Hindu
priest was hacked to death at his temple in Bangladesh’s southwestern
district of Jhenaidah, police said.
That incident was the latest in a wave
of killings across Bangladesh of secular bloggers, academics and
religious minorities such as Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Sufi
Muslims — despite a nationwide government crackdown and the arrest of
more than 14,000 people.
The government launched an anti-militant
drive across the Muslim-majority nation last month to stamp out the
murders, but many of those detained are believed to be ordinary
criminals and not Islamic extremists.
Home to almost 150 million Muslims, the
country until recently had avoided the kind of radicalism plaguing
others parts of the world. But that’s changing as the attacks seem
designed to silence those to dare to criticize Islam.
One high-profile killing was the murder of Bangladeshi-American writer Avijit Roy
in 2014 that occurred right outside Dhaka’s annual book fair. In April,
a well-known LGBT activist and his friend were murdered.
The trend has sparked debate about the involvement of ISIS.
