India confirms one of its citizens died in Dhaka hostage crisis

An Indian citizen is among the 20 hostages killed by gunmen who seized a restaurant popular with foreigners in Dhaka.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said in a twitter post that the victim had been identified as 19- year-old Tarushi Jain, who studied at the University of California (UC), Berkely.

Seven gunmen had barged into the Holey Artisan Bakery at the Gulshan diplomatic zone around 8:45 on Friday night and taken the guests hostage.

The crisis, which brought Dhaka to its knees for 12 hours, ended after army commandos stormed the cafe on Saturday morning.

One Rashed Hasan Khan, who was among the relatives of hostages waiting outside the café, told the media his son’s friend, Tarushi, a student of the UC, Berkley, was trapped inside.

“Tarushi lived at the Baridhara Residential Area. She is one of those trapped inside. We have failed to contact her until 11:30am (on Saturday),” he said.

Witnesses said the attackers shouted 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) on their way in and started firing blanks before taking the guests inside hostage.

Police moved in soon after, leading to an exchange of fire, in which two police officers were killed.

The hostage standoff ended almost 12 hours later after army commandos initiated ‘Operation Thunderbolt’ on Saturday morning to free the hostages.

The army said that they had rescued 13 hostages and found bodies of 20 foreigners inside the restaurant, who, they said, had been killed with sharp weapons late Friday night, hours before the security forces moved in.

An army spokesperson told a media briefing that one of the attackers was captured alive, while six others were killed in the raid.