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Jan 2017
28m 50s

Siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

On the night of the 1st July 2016, five young Bangladeshi Islamist militants stormed a Dhaka restaurant popular with foreign residents and visitors. The siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery was an unprecedented attack in Bangladesh. 29 people lost their lives that night - the majority of them non-Bangladeshis, shot or butchered with machetes. But not everyone was killed. For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly together with local journalist, Morshed Ali Khan, tell the story of what happened inside the restaurant over 11 hours - the chef forced to cook sea bass by the killers, the kitchen worker locked for hours in a single toilet cubicle with 7 other people. There are tales of escape and resistance. Above all, there is courage amidst the carnage, and in the face of bloody adversity.

(Photo L to R: Delwar Hossain, Sumon Rezar, Shishir Sarker. Credit: Linda Pressly/BBC copyright)

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