BD in mourning
 

DHAKA: Bangladesh began two days of national mourning on Sunday after 20 hostages were slaughtered at a restaurant as the government insisted the attackers were homegrown Jihadists and **t followers of the Islamic State group.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina decreed the mourning period as she vowed to drag Bangladesh back from the brink, warning of a concerted bid to turn one of the world’s most populous nations into a failed state.

Amid mass condemnation of the killings in Dhaka, whose victims included 18 foreigners, the Islamic State group said it had targeted a gathering of "citizens of crusader states" on Friday night at a Western-style cafe.

But a government minister insisted the killers, six of whom were gunned down at the end of the siege, were members of a homegrown militant outfit and had ** links to international Jihadist networks.

"They are members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP, referring to a group which has been banned in Bangladesh for more than a decade.

"They have ** connections with the Islamic State." As well as the 20 slain hostages whose bodies were found amid pools of blood after commandos stormed the cafe to end the siege, two policemen were also shot dead in a fierce gunbattle at its outset.

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