Bangladesh police yesterday increased their hunt for the men suspected of carrying out a deadly attack on a restaurant in the capital, with reports suggesting the attackers attended some of the country’s top schools and colleges.

The gunmen stormed the restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone late on Friday and killed 20 people, most of them foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the United States, in an assault claimed by Islamic State.

It was one of the deadliest militant attacks to date in Bangladesh, where Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed a series of killings of liberals and religious minorities in the last year.

… Rohan Gunaratna, a professor of security studies at Singapore”s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the Dhaka gunmen”s background may have helped them mount the attack at the Holey Artisan restaurant, popular with the city’s well-heeled and foreigners.