Bangladesh’s prime minister has urged parents whose children have gone missing to provide information after some of the militants who attacked a Dhaka cafe last week turned out to be young men who had broken contact with their well-to-do families.
Twenty people were killed in the attack, most of them foreigners, when five young Bangladeshi men stormed into the restaurant in an upscale part of the capital in an assault claimed by Islamic State.
Three of the militants attended prestigious schools or universities in Dhaka and Malaysia and had been reported missing from their homes for months. One was the son of a politician.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, battling escalating Islamist militancy, appealed for cooperation from parents whose children had left home without explanation.
“We have learned that many college and university students are missing. Don’t just file a GD, give us all the information and photos,” she said in a speech on Thursday.
A GD, or general diary, is an initial police report.
The head of Bangladesh’s counter terrorism police, Monirul Islam, said it was difficult to provide an estimate of the number of children who had gone missing.
