Japanese killed in Dhaka cafe put up little resistance, autopsies indicate

The bodies of seven Japanese killed in the terrorist attack in Bangladesh on last Friday bore deep wounds on the neck, but had few scars, suggesting that the victims had little time to resist, according to police autopsies.

On Tuesday morning the bodies were flown back to Haneda airport in Tokyo, accompanied by the victims' relatives, reported The Japan Times.

After the police conducted the postmortems of the victims it came to light that they had died from loss of blood, brain injuries and other causes, investigative sources said.

"The bodies bore few scars that suggest hard resistance," the sources said, adding that some of them "sustained deep wounds on the neck, indicating they may have died quickly".

In the cafe attack, Bangladeshi authorities said earlier, most of the victims were killed in execution-style using sharp weapons before the security forces launched the rescue operation codenamed 'Operation Thunderbolt' to clear the terrorists.

The Japanese victims were Makoto Okamura, 32, Yuko Sakai, 42, and Rui Shimodaira, 27, all of whom worked for Tokyo-based construction consultancy Almec Corp.; Hideki Hashimoto, 65, Nobuhiro Kurosaki, 48, and Hiroshi Tanaka, 80, who worked for Tokyo-based consultancy Oriental Consultants Global Co.; and Koyo Ogasawara, 56, an employee of Katahira & Engineers International.

Tamaoki Watanabe, who was among the 13 people rescued when Bangladeshi police stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery, returned to Tokyo on a small jet early Tuesday. The sole Japanese survivor of the attack, who is in his 40s, is recovering from a gunshot wound at a hospital in Tokyo.

The police plan to interview Watanabe about the circumstances surrounding the attack.

The Islamist gunmen who laid siege to the cafe last Friday killed 20 hostages, including Japanese, Italians and an Indian, as well as two policemen. Security forces later killed six gunmen and captured one, ending the siege.

--IANS

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