3 U.S. College Students Among Those Killed In Bangladesh Attack
ATLANTA (WJZ/CBS News/AP) -- Three U.S. college students are among at least 20 hostages killed during an extremist attack in the Bangladeshi capital Friday.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the 10-hour siege in Dhaka.
Officials say the men stormed a restaurant popular with foreigners in a diplomatic zone in the city, taking dozens of hostages in an upscale restaurant and exchanging gunfire with security forces.
According to CBS News, Bangladeshi forces stormed the restaurant early Saturday, killing six of the attackers and rescuing 13 captives.
A survivor's father told CBS News that the attackers spared people who could recite verses from the Quran.
Emory University president James Wagner said in emails to employees that students Faraaz Hossain and Abinta Kabir were among the dead.
Kabir was a student at the school's campus in Oxford. She was visiting family and friends in Bangladesh when she was taken hostage and killed. Hossain had completed his second year at Oxford and was headed to the business school in the fall.
School spokeswoman Elaine Justice says Kabir was a sophomore from Miami, Florida; and Hossain was from Dhaka.
A student at University of California-Berkeley, 18-year-old Tarushi Jain, was also killed. The Associated Press reports she was an Indian citizen.
According to a statement from the school, she and seven other students were completing internships with UC Berkeley's Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies. A graduate of the American International School in Dhaka, Jain started at UC Berkeley in 2014 and was intending to major in economics.
Others confirmed dead in the attack included nine Italians, seven Japanese and three Bangladeshis.
Two Italians, a desert chef and businessman whose wife was slain in the Dhaka restaurant attack, recounted how they survived the 10-hour siege to the Associated Press.
Jacopo Bioni, 34, who specializes in ice-cream making, was filling in at the Dhaka restaurant on Friday night. He was in the kitchen cooking pasta as a special treat requested by the Italian diners when the attack began. State TV says Saturday that an Argentine chef who knew the layout of the restaurant hustled him up to the roof.
The Rome daily La Repubblica quotes Brioni as saying that extremists firing weapons and hurling grenades chased them on the roof until the pair jumped two stories down into a neighboring property.
The businessman, Gianni Boschetti, had just received a phone call and stepped into the restaurant's garden to talk when the attack began. State TV said he threw himself into some bushes, then escaped and called the Italian embassy.
His sister-in-law, Patrizia D'Antona, told state TV he "wandered all night" from hospital to hospital in hopes of finding his wife, Claudia D'Antona. She was later identified as among the nine Italians found slain in the restaurant.
The Islamic State group has released photos of the five men it says carried out the attack in Bangladesh.
The SITE Intelligence Group says the photos were circulated online Saturday, and identified the attackers by noms de guerre indicating they are Bangladeshi. The militants are each shown smiling and posing in front of a black IS flag.
SITE says the IS-run Aamaq news agency issued a new report on the attack. Aamaq says the fighters used "knives, cleavers, assault rifles and hand grenades" but released Muslims unharmed.
An earlier IS statement says the attack on the upscale restaurant in the capital, Dhaka, targeted citizens of "Crusader countries," saying citizens of such countries would not be safe "as long as their warplanes kill Muslims."
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