Dhaka attack: 20-year-old Faraaz killed after he refused to leave his friends behind

In a recent abhorrent terror attack in Bangladesh, in which 20 hostages were hacked to death, Faraaz Ayaaz Hossain, 20, was brutally killed. He was a student at Emory University in Atlanta, the United States. He had come to Dhaka on 18 May to spend his summer holidays.

The bakery, where the massacre happened, was one of the popular hangout spots in the state especially for foreigners. Faraaz went to the Holey Artisan Baker on 1 July evening with two foreign friends; Abinta Kabir, a US citizen and also a student of Emory University, and Tarishi Jain, an Indian national and student of the University of California, Berkeley.

The three were friends from the same school and all of them were trapped inside as hostages when the restaurant was taken over by armed militants around 8:30pm. An eye-witness account of one of the hostages was published in The New York Times newspaper on 2 July detailing the horrific acts of the militants.

In the report, Hishaam Hossain, Faraaz Hossain’s nephew, was quoted to have said that Faraz was given the opportunity to leave too because of his Bengali ancestry. However, the assassins asked his accompanying friends their nationality and refused to release them. Faraaz, therefore, refused to leave his friends behind, his relative said. 

Faraaz was also among those found dead on Saturday morning in this terrifying attack. The militants allegedly murdered anyone who could not recite verses from the holy book. Faraaz is a true example of someone with sheer selflessness as he refused to leave his friends behind at the hands of the militants. 

The Bangladeshi attackers - identified only as Akash, Badhon, Bikash, Don and Ripon - all came from 'rich families'. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, releasing photos of the grinning killers, but Bangladeshi authorities have denied the Islamic State’s claim and instead blamed the homegrown militant outfit Jamaa’tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).