Twenty hostages and six gunmen have died after an attack on a cafe in Bangladesh. Thirteen hostages were reportedly rescued Saturday morning, ending the overnight siege in a diplomatic zone of Dhaka.
BBC reports that the "siege began as diners were gathering to break their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan." Reuters adds, "The restaurant was regarded as a tranquil place that was safe to visit in an increasingly dangerous city."
According to Agence France-Presse, "the army said most of the slain civilians were either Italian or Japanese. Most had been slaughtered with sharpened weapons." The Associated Press reports that a student at Emory University has been identified by the school as one of the victims.
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ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, which USA Today noted was "the latest in a series of dozens of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked murders, often by hacking or stabbing but sometimes by shooting, mostly targeting writers, activists, foreigners and religious minorities in the majority Muslim country."
Indeed, earlier on Friday a Hindu temple worker was hacked to death in the south-west of the country in the latest attack blamed on radical Islamists, police said.
