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Episode details

World Service,12 Jan 2017,26 mins

Siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery

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On the night of the 1 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. Twenty-nine people lost their lives that night - the majority of them non-Bangladeshis, shot or butchered with machetes. But not everyone was killed. 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 seven other people and 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)

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