UPDATE: DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Police say two officers killed by attackers holding hostages in restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh .
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — 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, according to a restaurant staff member and local media reports.
Sumon Reza, a kitchen staffer who escaped the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan area, told reporters that the attackers were armed with firearms and bombs as they entered the restaurant around 9:20 p.m. Friday and took customers and staffers hostage at gunpoint.
Jamuna Television, quoting Reza, said the attackers chanted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) as they launched the attack.
Local TV stations reported that the attackers’ identities were not immediately known.
A huge contingent of security guards cordoned off the area around the restaurant, trading gunfire with the attackers who set off bombs and exchanged gunfire with the security officials.
Benazir Ahmed, director general of the elite anti-crime force Rapid Action Battalion or RAB, told reporters at 11:20 p.m. (Dhaka time) that security forces were working to save the lives of the people trapped inside. Several foreigners are believed to be among the hostages inside the restaurant.
“Some derailed youths have entered the restaurant and launched the attack. We have talked to some of the people who fled the restaurant after the attack. We want to resolve this peacefully. We are trying to talk to the attackers, we want to listen to them about what they want,” Ahmed said.
“Some of our people have been injured. Our first priority is to save the lives of the people trapped inside.,” he said.
He would not say how many people were trapped inside.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters: “We are aware of reports of what appears to a hostage situation in the Gulshan neighborhood of Dhaka.”
He said the department is aware that local security forces are on the scene, responding, and the U.S. Embassy is in constant touch with Bangladeshi authorities concerning what is a “very fluid, very live situation.”
Kirby said the embassy has accounted for 100 percent of American citizens that are under the authority of the diplomatic chief of mission in Dhaka. He said he had no more details.
He said it was too early to say who was involved in the assault and their motivation.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
It’s open season on soft targets. The “Jihadists” want nothing more than a Trump presidency so they are pulling out all the stops, and soft targets are easy, get good media coverage and are cheap (just costs the life of a couple easily replaceable suicide bombers).
This is what most analysts cannot guarantee, when it comes to polling and voter preferences…
Incidents unforeseen and fear-inducing. The bright side is that Trump is only capable of reassuring people he has already reassured. However non-Trumpers are different, and usually do not respond to the types of things which endear Trump to his Base.
Saying that he predicted Brexit (as a jab at Democrats) and then pronouncing that Brexit is good (negating the latter) may give people on the left side of the I.Q. curve a feeling of enthusiasm for Trump, but it causes grave misgivings for most of the rest of us.
The media plays up these attacks (in fact all mass killings) far, far too much. They are given these murderers far too much publicity. After all, don’t terrorists (i.e., murderers) want to terrorize? More publicity = more terror. I’ m not calling for censorship, just the use of good editorial judgement.
I can’t listen to NPR anymore, since they seem to revel in the gory details of mass murder.
I’ve also been surprised that these murderers don’t seem to care if they are killing unarmed fellow Muslims. I had thought there was a prohibition against the killing of innocent Muslims by other Muslims.
This is not really anything new for Bangladesh. And the foreign contingent there is quite small and well-known to anyone who wants to attack them. (Speaking as knowing someone who was posted there and had to leave because of apparently-credible bomb threats.)
Juan Cole’s take on this is very elucidating: