IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Yemen: Aden army base hit by double car bomb attack

    {At least six troops killed and dozens wounded following two explosions in base adjoining Aden international airport.}

    At least six Yemeni soldiers have been killed and dozens wounded in a double car bomb attack at a military base in the southern city of Aden.

    The attackers detonated a car bomb near the entrance of the army base in the Khormaksar district adjoining Aden international airport, military sources said on Wednesday.

    The first explosion allowed the second vehicle to drive inside where it also blew up.

    The explosions were followed by gun battles between troops and about two dozen attackers, witnesses said. The base was sealed off by government forces sent as reinforcements.

    Yemen has been at war since September 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels and their allies drove the government out of the capital Sanaa and much of the country’s north.

    The Houthis controlled Aden, the main city in southern Yemen, for months before government forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition pushed them back in July.

    Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has exploited the chaos to expand areas under its control and recruit more followers.

    The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has also launched several mass-casualty attacks on security forces.

    Late last month, fighters pledging allegiance to ISIL claimed responsibility for a wave of suicide bomb attacks that killed 38 government troops in the southern port city of Mukalla.

  • Iraq bombing: Baghdad death toll rises to 250

    {Death toll rises to 250, officials say, as interior minister offers to resign after massive car bombing in Karada.}

    A massive suicide bombing in central Baghdad has now become the deadliest attack in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, with the death toll reaching 250, according to the health ministry.

    The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the devastating blast, which went off early on Sunday in Karada, a predominantly Shia neighbourhood.

    A lorry packed with explosives blew up on a crowded shopping street, which was packed with families out socialising after they had broken their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Many of those killed were women and children.

    The announcement by the health ministry on Tuesday came as interior minister Mohammed al-Ghabban offered to resign, saying authorities “had failed in having the different array of security forces work under a unified plan in Baghdad”.

    Ghabban called on the government to hand over responsibility for the security of the country’s cities to the interior ministry and described the hundreds of checkpoints dotted around the capital as “absolutely useless”.

    He said the explosives-rigged lorry came from Diyala province north of Baghdad, meaning it most likely successfully navigated multiple security checkpoints on the way into the Iraqi capital.

    Responsibility for security in Baghdad is divided between the army, federal and local police. The interior ministry is in charge of the police.

    Ghabban handed authority to his deputy, until Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi makes a decision on who will replace him. Abadi’s office made no immediate comment.

    Many Iraqis blame their political leadership for lapses in security in Baghdad that have allowed large amounts of explosives to be transported past checkpoints and into neighbourhoods packed with civilians.

    A group of protesters marched on Sunday from Karada to Abadi’s home to show their anger over what they described as repeated security failings.

    The death toll from the car bombing attack in Karada rose to 250

  • Israel allows lethal force on stone throwers: report

    {Regulations revealed by rights group allow police to use live fire as first resort against Palestinians throwing stones.}

    Israeli police have been authorised to use lethal force as a first resort against Palestinians throwing stones, firebombs or fireworks, according to documents revealed by human rights group Adalah.

    The latest open-fire regulations for Israeli police officers were approved and sent to officers in December, following two months of sporadic stabbing and vehicular attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces in Jerusalem, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

    The regulations include authorisation for officers to use live ammunition against Palestinians, including minors, suspected of throwing stones or firebombs, or those who appear likely to be about to commit such an offence.

    It also gives police officers authorisation to use lethal force as a first option in such cases.

    Previously, lethal force had been reserved as a final option for police officers when confronting violent Palestinian protests, only to be used after non-lethal means.

    The regulations were partially revealed by the Israeli police to Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, after the NGO successfully petitioned an Israeli court for access to the documents.

    On Monday, the group released excerpts which state that under the new regulations, “an officer is permitted to open fire [with live ammunition] directly on an individual who clearly appears to be throwing or is about to throw a firebomb, or who is shooting or is about to shoot fireworks, in order to prevent endangerment”, while the same response would be justified in a situation of “stone throwing using a slingshot”.

    {{‘Unchecked’ use of force}}

    Mohammed Bassam Mahajna, the Adalah attorney who filed the petition, said that the regulations “allow officers to act in an unchecked and criminal manner”, and permitted excessive use of force.
    “The chances that actions such as stone throwing or shooting of fireworks would present a life-threatening danger are extremely slim and there is no doubt that it is possible to handle such situations using non-lethal means,” he said in a statement.

    “The new regulations contradict existing general guidelines according to which the use of a deadly weapon by officers is permitted only when there is substantiated fear of danger to the life of an officer or other individual, and only if there is no other means by which this danger may be prevented,” he said.

    The Israeli police spokesperson did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment before publication.

    Since September 2015, a number of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and police while appearing to pose no immediate threat to life, in incidents that have made rights groups raise questions over officers’ excessive use of lethal force.

    Israel’s security cabinet initially approved the measures in September 2015 after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced a “war” on those who throw stones.

    The move brought the Israeli police force’s rules of engagement into line with the Israeli military operating in the occupied West Bank.

    Israeli soldiers have faced criticism for the way they interpret the “threat to life” and their subsequent use of lethal force against Palestinians. In April, Israeli soldier Elor Azariya was charged with manslaughter after he shot to death a wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron the previous month.

    At least 214 Palestinians and 34 Israelis have been killed in a wave of violence that has rocked Israel and the Palestinian territories since October.

    Israeli soldiers have faced criticism for the way they interpret the 'threat to life'

  • Abbas Kiarostami: Celebrated Iranian director dies

    {Award-winning film director dies aged 76 in Paris where he had gone to receive cancer treatment.}

    Abbas Kiarostami, the critically acclaimed Iranian director whose 1997 film “Taste of Cherry” won the prestigious Palme d’Or, has died aged 76.

    Iran’s official news agency IRNA said late on Monday Kiarostami died in Paris, where he had gone for cancer treatment last week after undergoing surgery in Iran earlier this year.

    Kiarostami wrote and directed dozens of films, winning more than 70 awards over an illustrious career spanning more than 40 years.

    He was born in 1940 in Tehran and continued to work from Iran after the 1979 revolution, when many of his fellow artists fled the country.

    The influential auteur is possibly best remembered for minimalist drama “Taste of Cherry”, which told the story of an Iranian man looking for someone to bury him after he killed himself, and won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1.

    Among his other films was “Close-Up” from 1990, which told the true story of a man who impersonated a filmmaker and tricked a family into believing that he would put them in a film.

    His 1987 film “Where is the Friend’s Home” is a story of honour, about a boy who tries to return schoolwork to a friend.

    The 2000 film “The Wind Will Carry Us” is about journalists from a city who go to a village to write about the death of an old woman, but they have time to learn about and appreciate rural life as the woman lives longer than expected.

    American filmmaker Martin Scorsese paid tribute to Kiarostami, describing him as “a true gentleman and, truly, one of our great artists”.

    “I got to know Abbas over the last 10 or 15 years,” he said. “He was a very special human being: quiet, elegant, modest, articulate and quite observant. I don’t think he missed anything. Our paths crossed too seldom, and I was always glad when they did.”

    Kiarostami is survived by two sons, Ahmad and Bahman Kiarostami, who work in multimedia and documentary film.

    Kiarostami was born in 1940 in Tehran and continued to work from Iran after the 1979 revolution

  • NASA’s Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter’s orbit

    {The $1.1 billion mission launched five years ago aims to probe the origin of the solar system before it aborts in 2018.}

    NASA’s Juno spacecraft has begun to orbit Jupiter to probe the origin of the solar system, the US space agency has said.

    The $1.1bn mission launched five years ago successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, after a 35-minute manoeuvre, NASA said on Tuesday.

    “Success! Engine burn complete. Juno is now orbiting Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet’s secrets,” NASA said on its Twitter account.

    The unmanned solar-powered observatory has traveled 2.7 billion kilometres since it was launched five years ago from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

    Once in position to begin its 20-month science mission, Juno will fly in egg-shaped orbits, each one lasting 14 days, to peer through the planet’s thick clouds, map its gargantuan magnetic field and probe through the crushing atmosphere for evidence of a dense inner core.

    The probe also will hunt for water in Jupiter’s thick atmosphere, a key yardstick for figuring out how far away from the sun the gas giant formed.

    ‘Into the scariest place’

    Juno will come the closest of any previous spacecraft to the planet, grazing Jupiter’s highest clouds just 5,000km from the surface.

    With an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, Jupiter is known for its Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than Earth that has been raging for hundreds of years.

    Heidi Becker, senior engineer on radiation effects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, described the close approach as going “into the scariest part of the scariest place … part of Jupiter’s radiation environment where nobody has ever been”.

    A key concern are radiation levels – as high as 100 million X-rays in the course of a year, she explained.

    Juno may also encounter debris as it speeds through a belt of dust and meteorites surrounding Jupiter.

    “If it gets hit – even by a big piece of dust, even by a small piece of dust – it can do very serious damage,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

    Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun, is believed to be the first planet to have formed in the solar system and likely captured many elements and gasses left over from the formation of the star that became Earth’s sun.

    Researchers hope the mission will provide a window back in time to study the formation of the solar system.

    The first mission designed to see beneath Jupiter’s clouds, Juno is named after the Roman goddess who was the wife of Jupiter, the god of the sky in ancient mythology.

  • Saudi Arabia: Bombings target Medina and Qatif mosques

    {Four security guards killed at Prophet’s Mosque in Medina in third attack to hit kingdom in one day.}

    Four security officers have been killed and five others wounded in a suicide attack outside one of Islam’s holiest sites, Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry said.

    The bombing at the Prophet’s Mosque in the city of Medina was the third attack to hit the kingdom on Monday, following blasts in the cities of Jeddah and Qatif.

    Photos of Medina posted on social media showed smoke billowing from a fire outside the mosque where Prophet Muhammad is buried.

    “Four security guards were martyred and five others wounded as a result of their opposition to the suicide attacker who detonated explosives near them as he was on his way to the mosque,” the ministry said on Twitter.

    The blast struck moments before sunset prayers when people were breaking their fast inside the mosque.

    The mosque, which is also known as Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, is visited by pilgrims from around the world during the final days of the fasting month of Ramadan.

    Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from South Africa, was at the mosque when he heard the blast just as the call to prayer was ending.

    He said many at first thought it was the sound of traditional, celebratory cannon fire, but then he felt the ground shake.

    “The vibrations were very strong,” Patel told the AP news agency. “It sounded like a building imploded.”

    Saudi Arabia’s state-run news channel, Al-Ekhbariya, aired live video of thousands of worshippers praying inside the mosque hours after the explosion.

    The mosque is considered to be Islam’s second holiest site after the Sacred Mosque, or Masjid-al-Haram, which surrounds the Kaaba in the city of Mecca.

    Following the attack in Medina, Muslims around the world expressed their outrage.

    Iran’s Foreign Minister Javed Zarif, writing on Twitter, said: “There are no more red lines left for terrorists to cross. Sunnis, Shiites [Shias] will both remain victims unless we stand united as one.”

    Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, tweeted: “It’s time we work together to save our religion from these deadly criminal gangs.”

    Qatif explosions

    Around the same time as the Medina blast, two other explosions struck near a mosque in the eastern city of Qatif on the Gulf coast.

    Witnesses said a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Shia mosque without causing any other injuries.

    They reported seeing body parts lying on the ground in the city’s business district.

    “Suicide bomber for sure. I can see the body” which was blasted to pieces, a resident told the AFP news agency.

    Nasima al-Sada, another resident, said “one bomber blew himself up near the mosque”.

    A third witness told Reuters news agency that one explosion destroyed a car parked near the mosque, followed by another explosion just before 7pm local time.

    There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks.

    Earlier on Monday morning, two security officers were injured as a suicide bomber blew himself up near the US consulate in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

    Security officers became suspicious of a man near the car park of Dr Suleiman Faqeeh Hospital which is directly across from the US diplomatic mission. When they moved in to investigate, “he blew himself up with a suicide belt inside the hospital parking”, the interior ministry said.

    In January, at least four people were killed in a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in the eastern al-Ahsa region.

    In October, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Najran, in which at least one person was killed.

    ISIL, also known as ISIS, also claimed responsibility for an attack at a mosque inside a special forces headquarters in the city of Abha in August 2015. Fifteen people were killed in that attack.

  • Amnesty: Syria armed groups committing war crimes

    {Rights group in its report accuses five rebel groups of committing atrocities in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.}

    Five Syrian rebel groups have been accused of a “chilling” wave of torture, abductions and summary killings in the northern provinces of Idlib and parts of Aleppo.

    Amnesty International, a UK-based rights group, said on Tuesday that Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Nureddin Zinki, the Levant Front and Division 16 were committing “war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law with impunity.

    “Many civilians live in constant fear of being abducted if they criticise the conduct of armed groups in power or fail to abide by the strict rules that some have imposed,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

    The report was based on interviews with about 70 individuals living or working in the northern provinces of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, areas controlled by rebels.

    The abuses were committed over four years by five armed groups, including some backed by the US and other regional powers, Amnesty said.

    “While some civilians in areas controlled by armed opposition groups may at first have welcomed an escape from brutal Syrian government rule, hopes that these armed groups would respect rights have faded as they have increasingly taken the law into their own hands and committed serious abuses,” said Luther.

    {{‘Cease arms transfers’}}

    The report documented at least 24 abductions of activists, ethnic and religious minorities, as well as three children, two of whom remain missing as of last week.

    Amnesty also documented summary killings by gunfire, some in public, of pro-government fighters.

    It called on international backers to cease arms transfers to groups implicated in the abuse.

    One of the groups, Ahrar al-Sham, said in a letter that it would like to meet Amnesty to clarify the issues. It did not respond to the allegations.

    Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests but has since broken out into all-out war, leaving more than 250,000 people dead.

  • Pressure mounts for Olympic refugee team

    {How could the unprecedented opportunity and intense stress of the Rio Games affect the team’s 10 athletes.}

    A decade ago, Yiech Pur Biel fled from South Sudan alone, his parents and siblings having disappeared in the chaos of war.

    He arrived in Kakuma, Kenya, in 2005, and has been living as a refugee ever since. He started to run, a sport that gave him a sense of belonging in his new home – and he excelled. Last month, Biel was selected to compete in the 800 metres event as part of the first-ever Olympic refugee team.

    Already, he says, his life has changed.

    “I feel a lot of pressure in so many ways,” Biel told Al Jazeera on a break from a training session in the southwestern Kenyan town of Ngong.

    “It’s the first time there has ever been a refugee team, so I think it will have a big impact. I want it to help remove the title ‘refugee’ and show that we are more than that; it is just a small part of us … So many refugees are looking at the Games and look up to us, so I [want to] do my absolute best.”

    Next month’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will mark the first time in history that an all-refugee team has competed at the Games. While refugee athletes have participated in past Olympics, they have either done so as part of the delegations of their new countries, or under a special “independent” category.

    Composed of 10 athletes from the Middle East and North Africa, the refugee team has an unprecedented opportunity to achieve victory on the world’s biggest sporting stage. At the same time, these athletes must grapple with the intense pressures of competing at an elite level, while also being catapulted into an unexpected global spotlight.

    With the Games still a month away, team member Yusra Mardini, a Syrian swimmer who is training in her host country of Germany, has already had to decline more than 700 media requests, a spokesperson said.

    And Rami Anis, another Syrian swimmer on the refugee team who is training in his host country of Belgium, has felt the strain of having to repeatedly relive his refugee journey, his coach told Al Jazeera.

    “This is actually what he said yesterday: ‘When I arrived in Belgium, I did my best to forget, but everyone is just forcing me to relive everything,’” coach Carine Verbauwen said, noting Anis has been reluctant to speak in detail about his story, as he still has family living in Syria.

    “The little things I have heard have convinced me that it has left big scars,” Verbauwen said. “[While] he wants to represent the Syrian refugees … he does not want to relive the whole thing.”

    When the International Olympic Committee first unveiled the Olympic refugee team in early June, the organisation described it as a “symbol of hope” that could draw global attention to the magnitude of the ongoing refugee crisis – the worst since World War II.

    The athletes, who are all training in their host countries, will march under the Olympic flag to the Olympic anthem in Rio, and they have their own crew of staff and coaches.

    Along with Mardini, Anis and Biel, the 2016 refugee team will consist of Ethiopian marathoner Yonas Kinde, who is living in Luxembourg; South Sudanese runners James Nyang Chiengjiek, Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, Rose Nathike Lokonyen and Paulo Amotun Lokoro, who are living in Kenya; and judo practitioners Yolande Bukasa Mabika and Popole Misenga, who hail from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and are living in Brazil.

    With their lives already in an uncertain state, the added pressures of participating in the Olympics – combined with the heavy media emphasis on the world’s first Olympic refugee team – could affect their performance in different ways, experts say.

    Having been announced just last month, the team also faces a time crunch.

    “Given their circumstances … some might have been exposed to violence, forms of marginalisation, and limited access to coaches and resources,” said Robert Schinke, the Canada Research Chair in Multicultural Sport and Physical Activity, a federal government appointment aimed at finding culturally relevant approaches to motivate athletes.

    Olympic preparation typically begins four years before the Games, and skills are layered over the ensuing years to ensure peak competency, he told Al Jazeera.

    “Even then, the challenges to perform centre stage are significant. These refugee athletes will be acclimating to their Olympic opportunities in a relatively short time, with perhaps new coaching and new sport science resources,” Schinke said.

    “Perhaps the personal resilience of having overcome [personal trauma] might stand these athletes in good stead in terms of their desire to persist. However, major Games competencies take time to acquire.”

    While many Olympians from teams around the world are dealing with an influx of interview requests, the deluge has been even more intense for the refugee athletes, he acknowledged.

    “Overexposure to the media will leave most any athlete emotionally flat and unfocused,” Schinke said. “Layered on to this challenge, the worldwide media might not understand the cultural identities of the refugee athletes they are interviewing. Questions might then become obtrusive, placing the athletes in awkward situations, at a time where they are vulnerable.”

    Judy Van Raalte, a sports psychologist based in the United States, pointed out that the Olympic refugee team differs from others in that its athletes come from diverse national backgrounds and might speak different languages.

    While this could put them at a disadvantage in some respects, the team may also have an edge over other teams because of their past ability to overcome significant personal adversity, she told Al Jazeera.

    “Many of [the refugee athletes] have lived through worse and have proven to be resilient,” Van Raalte said. “The challenges of the past can make the stresses of the Olympic Games an enjoyable type of stress, or at least a manageable one.”

    As the refugee team is the first of its kind, it is difficult to predict how the athletes will fare once the Games have ended, Van Raalte added.

    The IOC has stated that it will “continue to support” the refugee athletes even after they leave Rio, but asked for details of what that support would look like, a spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the specifics were “still being discussed between the IOC and the entourage of the athletes”.

    It remained “too early” to say whether there would be an Olympic refugee team in the future, the spokesperson added.

    Lohalith, one of the South Sudanese runners training in Kenya, said everything has happened so quickly that she has not had much time to consider what lies ahead. Having being separated from her family more than a decade ago, she has not seen them since.

    “Maybe they will see me at the Olympics … I did not expect that I would ever make it this far,” Lohalith told Al Jazeera.

    “The spotlight is something that I don’t think about that much, but maybe that is because I haven’t understood how big it is yet – this all happened so fast, I can’t believe it.”

    After the Games end, Schinke said, most Olympians go through a “readjustment period”, as life afterwards cannot possibly match the heightened emotional experience of competing on the world stage.

    “Compounded on to this readjustment phase, the question is what becomes of these particular athletes after Rio? Where will they live? What will become of their athletic identities? Will these athletes have a bright future after Rio?” he asked.

    “Though an Olympic experience is defining, it is meant at best to be a springboard to further peak experiences throughout a life … Ideally, there will be a future in place for these refugee Olympians.”

  • Kuwait ‘foils ISIL attack plot’ during Ramadan

    {Seven ISIL suspects believed to be planning attacks on mosque and government building arrested, interior ministry says.}

    Kuwaiti police have arrested several suspects belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group believed to be planning attacks across the country, the interior ministry has said.

    “Kuwait security agencies have carried out three pre-emptive operations in Kuwait and abroad that led to derailing a number of Islamic State [referring to ISIL] plots targeting Kuwait and arresting several IS members,” an interior ministry statement said on Monday.

    Those arrested included 18-year-old Kuwaiti Talal Raja, who was allegedly planning to bomb a Shia mosque and an interior ministry building during Eid holidays, said the ministry statement carried by state news agency KUNA.

    The man allegedly confessed to plotting the attack, and had planned to deploy a suicide vest.

    In the second operation, at least three people, including a 52-year-old mother and her son, were detained in Syria and brought back to Kuwait, the ministry said, adding that they admitted to providing logistical support to “several terrorist operations”.

    Three more people, including a Kuwaiti policeman, were arrested in the third raid. Kalashnikov rifles, ammunitions and the black ISIL flag were all recovered from their possession.

    The interior ministry statement, published overnight on Monday, did not say when the arrests took place.

    All seven suspects confessed to being members of ISIL, also known as ISIS, which last year carried out a deadly attack at a Shia mosque in the oil-rich Gulf state – home to several US military bases. That attack left at least 27 people dead.

    Kuwait launched a security crackdown in the wake of last year’s attack, which had been carried out by a Saudi suicide bomber.

    The government said the bombing, Kuwait’s worst ever such attack, was aimed at stoking sectarian strife in the majority Sunni state, where Shia Muslims comprise between 15 to 30 percent of the population.

    Last November, Kuwaiti security authorities busted an international cell that was sending air defence systems and funds to ISIL.

    Kuwait launched a security crackdown on ISIL after it attacked a Shia mosque last year

  • Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina pays respect to Dhaka victims

    {Search for evidence and masterminds gathers pace as killers are described as rich and educated Bangladeshis.}

    Security officials in Bangladesh have stepped up a search for evidence and the possible masterminds behind a deadly attack in a popular cafe in the capital, Dhaka, as the prime minister visited a stadium where the bodies of the victims were taken.

    At least 20 hostages, including 18 foreigners, and two policemen died in Friday night’s attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group – a claim denied by the government.

    Six attackers were killed by paramilitary forces in the final stages of the 10-hour standoff at the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe, but one suspect was taken alive and was being interrogated by Bangladeshi intelligence.

    Authorities released photographs of the bodies of five attackers, along with their first names: Akash, Badhon, Bikash, Don and Ripon. Police said the men belonged to the banned domestic group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, or JMB, and their families had not heard from them in months.

    Asked whether they might also have had ISIL ties, Police Inspector General AKM. Shahidul Hoque said authorities were investigating that possibility.

    {{‘They do not have any religion’}}

    Despite the police saying ISIL links were being investigated, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan refuted on Sunday the possibility that the group directed the attack from abroad.

    The government says the group based in Syria and Iraq has no presence in Bangladesh, and in the past has suggested that any claims of responsibility for violence waged in the South Asian country are simply opportunistic attempts at grabbing global attention.

    “They are all Bangladeshis. They are from rich families, they have good educational background,” Khan said of the attackers.

    The siege marked an escalation in the violence that has hit Bangladesh with increasing frequency. Most of the attacks in the past several months have involved machete-wielding men singling out individual activists, foreigners and religious minorities.

    Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has blamed her political opponents of trying to create chaos by backing domestic fighters.

    “Anyone who believes in religion cannot do such an act,” Hasina said on Saturday. “They do not have any religion, their only religion is terrorism.”

    On Monday, she paid her respects to the victims by visiting an army stadium where the bodies were kept. The bodies would be handed over to the families soon after, officials said.

    US Secretary of State John Kerry has offered Hasina help to investigate those behind the killings, “in accordance with the highest international standards and offered immediate assistance from US law enforcement, including the FBI”, according to a State Department spokesman.

    {{Travel warnings issued}}

    The 20 hostages who were killed included nine Italians, seven Japanese, three Bangladeshis and one Indian teenager. Thirteen hostages were rescued when commandos stormed the cafe on Saturday morning.

    Another 25 officers and one civilian were wounded, and some of the rescued hostages had injuries. There was no information on their condition.

    The attack was the worst in the recent series of attacks by hardline fighters in the moderate, mostly Muslim nation of 160 million.

    Unlike the previous attacks, the assailants were well-prepared and heavily armed with guns, bombs and sharp objects that police later said were used to torture some of the 35 captives.

    The fact that the attackers targeted a popular restaurant in the heart of the diplomatic quarter of Bangladesh’s capital signaled a possible change in tactics.

    The restaurant overlooking a lake serves Spanish food and is frequented by residents of Gulshan, an affluent neighbourhood where most of the foreign embassies are located.

    The hostages were asked to recite verses from the Quran, to prove themselves Muslim, according to a witness. Those who passed were allowed to eat. Those who failed were tortured and slain.

    Western embassies issued travel warnings to their citizens, advising those in the country to be vigilant and avoid places frequented by foreigners in the diplomatic zone. The US embassy also urged its citizens and personnel to avoid traveling on foot or in open vehicles exposed to potential attackers.

    In its claim of responsibility, ISIL said its operatives had targeted the citizens of “Crusader countries” in the attack, warning that citizens of such countries would not be safe “as long as their warplanes kill Muslims”. The statement was circulated in a manner consistent with past ISIL claims of responsibility.

    PM Hasina paid respects to the victims by visiting a stadium where their bodies were kept