A dessert chef who is only one of two Italians to survive the Dhaka restaurant siege says he took refuge in an adjoining house and stayed there long after the massacre ended.
Jacopo Bioni, 34, told Sky TG24 TV in a phone interview broadcast on Sunday that after jumping two stories down onto the property of a nearby house, the residents, although "understandably" frightened by his sudden appearance, welcomed and hid him. Bioni said when he saw an attacker point a rifle at a table of Italian diners, he fled to the roof without thinking twice.
Bioni says police came to talk to him Saturday morning and then he left the house in the afternoon.
"I grabbed two things and my passport, headed to the airport and caught the first flight out," he says.
He says he has no desire to look at attack photos on social or other media, since he prefers to remember Bangladesh in happier times.
The 20 hostages who were killed included nine Italians, seven Japanese, three Bangladeshis and one Indian teenager. Two police officers were killed by the attackers, and 13 people were rescued when commandos stormed the restaurant Saturday morning. Another 25 officers and one civilian were wounded, and some of the rescued hostages had injuries. The hospitals treating them would not give fresh information on their conditions Sunday.
The attack was the worst in the recent series of attacks by radical Islamists in the moderate, mostly Muslim nation of 160 million. Unlike the previous attacks, the assailants were well-prepared and heavily armed with guns, bombs and sharp objects that police later said were used to torture some of the 35 captives.
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