Friends of three slain college students who were brutally slaughtered in a terrifying attack by Islamist extremists at Dhaka’s Holey Artisan Bakery organised a vigil in memory of the victims at Washington, D.C in the United States on 2 July.

Three of the college students are Abinta Kabir, a student at Emory University who was from Miami, Florida, fellow Emory student Faraaz Hossain, who attended the college’s business school, and Tarushi Jain, 19, who studied at University of California Berkeley campus.

All of them attend high school together in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The mourners shared remembrances Ishrat Akhond, one of Bangladeshi victims, also a human resources director at ZXY International, a buying house.

Monica Jahan Bose, a Bangladeshi-American artist, lawyer, and activist, spoke about how the terrible loss of nine Italians who had come to Bangladesh for work and seven Japanese who were working with the Japanese government on an aid mission to Bangladesh. She also spoke about her close friend Ishrat Akhond, a curator, business woman, art lover, and incredible supporter of Bangladeshi artists.

Shimul Mou read some of Ishrat’s Facebook posts in Bangla and English, showing her deep affection for Bangladesh.

The gathering of around 200 people also paid their tribute to the Italian and Japanese citizens who were slain. Many people spoke about ending violence in the name of religion.

Earlier, on 2 July, gunmen stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in the capital’s diplomatic quarter at Gulshan, rounding up foreign hostages before murdering 20 people with explosives and machetes.