Dhaka terrorist were not followers of Islamic State: Bangladesh

July 03, 2016 12:09

The terrorists who launched Friday's attack on a Dhaka restaurant, slaughtering 20 hostages, were members of a homegrown Bangladeshi militant group and not followers of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, a senior minister of Bangladesh told NDTV.

"They are members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh," said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. The group has been banned in Bangladesh for more than a decade. "They have no connections with the Islamic State," he said.

Earlier, the police had said that the seven terrorists were local Bangladeshis and five of them had been of the radar of the authorities. The police had tried to arrest them before.

Gunmen had stormed the upmarket restaurant popular with expatriates in the diplomatic zone late on Friday, before killing 18 foreigners in a coordinated mass killing that experts said marked a level of scale and sophistication not previously seen in Bangladesh.

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