After exchanging gunfire with Security Forces. According to isis, to the isis affiliated news agency, isis is claiming responsibility for the attack. That is not, however, an official statement out of isis. Our nbc producer based in pakistan joins me now. What do we know at this hour . Apparently we lost our connection. So lets go on to panaki. Can you hear me . Yes, i can hear you. What are you experiencing at this hour . Well, now, this incident happened in basically a diplomatic area. I was there, until an hour ago i was there. Now all the roads are blocked down there. People were rescued from the area if not exactly from the restaurant. Right now, all the roads to that area, it is blocked. So we cannot say whats going on down there, you know. At the restaurant there. Did you say an argnetinian national . I think we lost you completely now. Difficult communicating with bangladesh as you can imagine, the cell phone situation on a good day is not great over there. Lets see if we can get our nbc producer based in islamabad, pakistan, right next door to bangladesh. Can you hear me . I can hear you. Its kate again. Bring us up to speed. You have been talking to people on the front lines. Last i checked in with you, it had quieted down and the authorities were outside the restaurant but had not made any move to go inside. Is that still the case . That is the case, kate. We are being told that there is a process of biding time. Thats essentially whats happening. No demands have been made by the suspects inside. There are also doubts about the identification of the suspects. When i talked to another policeman and mentioned the isis claims which had sprung up, he said we have no idea on the ground, it doesnt look like isis. It just looks like local terrorists. When i asked him how, he said well, the two officers who we lost on the ground earlier today, they were killed by a handmade grenade. It wasnt a military grade grenade. It was a handmade grenade. That indicates this is some sort of local group. We dont see some sort of Huge International syndicate terrorist connection over there. However, the numbers still remain the same. Around 40 hostages inside, at least one westerner in what is confirmed by police, seven to eight terrorists with heavy weapons, with automatic weapons and what we now know are handmade grenades which they used effectively. They knew what they were doing. They went in shouting chants of allah akbar and no demands have been made. No shots have been fired for awhile. We know at least one hostage managed to make it out. We are not clear at all about how he did that. What we are clear about is when Police Officials rushed to rescue him, they died in that process because they were attacked by a grenade thrower from the first floor of this rather posh restaurant. Has there been any communication from those inside . Are you getting any kind of reports about whats happening to those people . We are not entirely clear about whats happening inside, nor is police. In fact, its dark. They lit up some parts of this area for their own purposes as far as Security Forces are concerned. They are not clear about the identity. When i kept on prodding the Police Officials about who exactly is inside, because we are hearing all sorts of reports, when i said are there more than one, for example, is there more than one westerner inside, he said we dont know exactly. But what we do know from the profile of the restaurant is its a high end place, in the posh part of town. Lots of diplomatic highbrow crowd in and out of there. One can assume the clientele of this restaurant is perhaps on the whos who of dhakas finest. Now, that doesnt mean that theres not locals inside, not just diplomats and locals inside. One official was saying one of the Restaurant Owners relatives is still inside as well. Essentially, not really clear what the status of the hostages is except that one is confirmed as a westerner and at least one is confirmed as someone who managed to escape. All right, waj, thank you for your continued reporting there. Joining me now is Planning Editor at the dhaka tribune. Hes not far from where all of this is happening. We checked in a little earlier and you were telling me much the same as what our producer just said. Things had quieted down. Is there still a sense of quiet at 4 00 in the morning . So this is the situation right now. It had been quiet for several hours and then about ten minutes ago, its about 4 00 a. M. Here, about 3 50, 3 53, three shots rang out. We have eyewitness reports that a young man was carried out. I have been told that he was believed to be a suspect in this hostage taking and thats the latest that we have. The government has been very quiet until a moment ago but the home minister has been contacted and he says that our Prime Minister has been informed and that she is being kept up to date about developments in this hostage taking crisis. Asif, you said this is about 15 minutes ago that things changed and someone was brought out. I couldnt hear everything you said because my producers were talking to me. Did you say one person who you believe was one of the hostage takers . Right. We have a report that shots rang out at 3 53 a. M. Three shots rang out. And shortly afterwards, members of the battalion, an elite police force here in bangladesh, actually a multiuse force, brought out somebody, a young man who is believed to be a suspect in the hostage taking. But at this point, do you still believe that there are up to eight other people armed individuals inside Holding Hostages . We have no reports on the rest. We were told earlier and everybody had been reporting that eight to nine attackers formed that initial team. We are not sure at this point if that number is accurate. We do know one person has been brought out and its believed to be a suspect. How many remain, we cannot say for sure. In terms of how many people are inside and potentially held as hostages, you probably dont know either . We dont have any information on that yet. Nothing that we can confirm. Okay. Asif, that is a Big Development that at the very least the police were able to bring out members of a rapid action about tal battalion were able to bring out one person believed to be a suspect. If i could ask you to please continue reporting and check back with us, if you learn any more details. We were hoping this would come to a positive resolution. Thanks so much. Joining me now, msnbc terrorism analyst malcolm nance. We have been following this for hours. We have been speaking over the course of the last five hours. Thats some good news, that 15 minutes ago, shots were several shots were heard and a battalion went in and brought somebody out. Well maybe good news . Could be good news, could be bad news. The Rapid Action Battalion is a paramilitary organization. Its crossservices sort of like an intergovernmental special force. What probably happened was they set the inner perimeter. They have an outer perimeter, regular police, inner perimeter of the r. A. B. The r. A. B. Probably shot somebody with a sniper weapon system, wounded him. Somebody was carrying guard duty and managed to snatch him and drag him off. From the look of this, two stories as he says, an open pavilion on the righthand side i think we have pictures of what it looks like. You can see its a very nice restaurant in the diplomatic district. However, part of his assessment or the previous reporters assessment that these were local boys, this couldnt be an International Terrorist group, this is how isis and al qaeda operate. They take local people, they can buy, create their own Weapons Systems. We saw that in indonesia. They had coconut based weapons, bombs and hand grenades. They can create them but they can still carry out an act of International Terrorism and get themselves on the map. So the fact that they have what was just described as homemade grenades, handmade grenades, doesnt make you think that this is not isis. That doesnt matter at all. Improvised Weapons Systems and improvised explosives is the hallmark of isis. All it requires is you to get the explosive filler, a charge, container and fuse, and you can create very effective hand grenades. Getting automatic weapons in a country like bangladesh, i have been there, its an extremely poor place. You can buy weapons, they are often stolen, come across continuthe indian border. These things can be acquired if you have money. This group had to have been enabled in some way for them to plot, plan and now significant terrorist attack that is far bigger than anything that has ever been done in bangladesh before. We were talking about sunup. Its going to be sunrise in about an hour and a half from now in bangladesh. Its been relatively quiet aside from this incident 15 minutes ago or so. What do you, if you were gaming out what might happen here, whats best Case Scenario, worst Case Scenario . I have had to act as a terrorist in my career so gaming out terrorist operations is part of the mission. In this case, this is most likely not what most Law Enforcement would like it to be. This is not a hostage barricade. This is going to probably end up as a suicide hostage barricade. Thats a mission where they go in, they take mass hostages, they get as much International Attention as they can, they draw it out over a long period of time and either the local Law Enforcement initiates an attack and then they kill the hostages, or they wait for some point of significance within the timeline and they execute the hostages. We are now in ramadan on a friday night going to a saturday morning, which was a significant time to attack because they knew that everybody was out having their they break the fast on friday night. Right. So now we are coming to morning, to the prayers, the morning prayers, and if they want to survive this and draw it out, then it will go past the prayers. If they have in their heads that they want this to end and carry out a massacre, its going to occur just after those prayers. So just maybe an hour and a half. Quite possible. Or they could try based on international media, try to drag it out for a few days. But its going to end in a very bloody way, im certain. We will hope you are wrong in this case. I hope so, too. Appreciate your insight as always. Well be right back. [siren] come on come on. P g. Proud sponsor of moms. Back now with our continuing coverage of breaking news in bangladesh, the capital city there, an attack on a restaurant where expats or westerners frequent and a hostage situation that is ongoing at this hour, as it is 4 15 in the morning in bangladesh. We are getting some new video into nbc. I want to warn you before we show this that there are some graphic images here. But this appears to be people injured, probably in the initial attack. As its been described to us, gunmen stormed this restaurant around 9 20 local time this evening so thats hours and hours ago, and shots rang out. Many people have described hearing gunshots, hearing explosive sounds, in those early couple of hours or early moments. Then things went silent and up until the last half hour, we hadnt heard of any movement or anything except that gunmen were Holding Hostages and the police had cordoned off an area around the restaurant. Just in the last 15 minutes, we have been reporting that there was one incident where it appears one of the gunmen may have emerged and gotten shot by police and been taken away. Aside from that, we still believe this is the site of a hostage taking situation. Joining me now, seth, you lived and worked in bangladesh, you know that area. Can you compare for us what we are seeing here versus what we have seen unfortunately in previous weeks, even earlier this week in turkey . Well, i think that there is an important parallel there but there are also important distinctions. Its important to understand that this attack in bangladesh today is really unprecedented in bangladesh both in the scope and the scale, but its not something that really comes as a surprise. In fact, bangladesh much unlike turkey has had a political situation where the government under the Prime Minister has been really making an effort to restore secularism to the country and to reverse islamization that took place under prior military generals, military dictators. This has infuriated local Islamist Groups who have been really carrying out political attacks against the government, calling them antiislam, saying they are trying to cleanse the country of muslims, which echoes the rhetoric put out by groups like isis and al qaeda in their propaganda. The effect there is that these local Islamist Groups are mainstreaming this radical extremism and the idea that the government, by promoting secularism, is somehow a threat to islam. In fact, during a recent Supreme Court case with the bangladesh Supreme Court, it was considering whether or not to keep islam as the official religion of bangladesh and the local Islamist Groups put out statements warning that they were prepared to carry out an armed jihad if the government tried to restore the secular constitution. On the flipside, what is the governments effectiveness against these groups . Has the government had an effective counterterrorism strategy . You know, thats a very good question. I think that its been definitely something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, we havent seen the types of really open islamist extremist terrorist groups organizing the way that they do, for example, in pakistan. On the other hand, i think that it is undeniable that there is a growing problem of islamist extremism in bangladesh and that ties between local groups on the ground and International Groups like isis or al qaeda are taking place. I think that this attack today should put to rest any question about whether these big Transnational Islamist Networks are communicating and working with local groups on the ground in bangladesh. You say it should put that to rest. You say they are coordinating . I think it would be very hard to deny that at this point. Thank you so much, seth. Appreciate your time tonight. Im joined now by steve clemens, editor at large for the atlantic. We have been talking for hours, now, too. A couple of thoughts. Ramadan, we mentioned it now, we are in the final week. Its a friday night, when this happened. We are almost to saturday morning now in bangladesh. What if any effect does that have or what context does that give to this whole situation . Well, i think malcolm nance said it quite well. We dont know exactly what the motivations and the sort of points of difference to these terrorists are. He sort of bluntly predicted that theres a possibility that after morning prayers, you may see something horrific unfold. We just done know so were speculating on this. I agree with those people that have said there has been a pattern where some of these terrorists in various places have been trying to draw out International Coverage to sort of further their branding campaign of what theyre doing in the world, and i would agree with that. So ramadan and i have to basically say for those people who have been to this area of dhaka, this district and this particular area, its not only diplomats in this area. There are a lot of great ngo heads who dedicated their lives to try to help the Impoverished Bangladeshi people, so it is a very special place of joy and safety and i think ramadan and breaking the fast as you just noted is something that isis affiliates or Islamist Groups, we dont know all of that just yet, are essentially trying to strike into the heart of that joy. Steve, do you think the u. S. Authorities would be helping at this stage of the game . I dont know how this works. Would the fbi be consulting with teams on the ground or obviously theres always d. O. D. Personnel anyplace in the world the u. S. Has a presence. Would they be coordinating or helping . Because there is this question about whether bangladesh has a sophisticated police force and sophisticated antiterrorism s. W. A. T. Team. Well, clearly theres not been enough. John carlin, assistant secretary for terrorism in the department of justice, was here this morning with me in aspen and i think that hes been, you know, one of the people thats been worried about the growth of Terror Networks abroad and with regard to bangladesh or turkey, where there was a recent major attack, there is coordination, there is information flow, and i think that the question is it enough in a place like bangladesh, especially when the publisher of an lgbt magazine was recently killed, he also had very good ties with the u. S. Embassy and while there had been other killings, that particular one really struck at the home of the growing security problem in bangladesh and you saw an uptick recently i think in concern here. People like lisa monaco on the president S National Security team had been watching this. And the question is, does bangladesh have the capacity to have done more on its own regardless of where the u. S. May have been. My answer is just speculating, probably not. I have been watching the twitter traffic today. Bangladeshis commenting about this. Friends of the liberal blogger who was killed or the publisher of the lgbt magazine and other secularists who have been targeted. There is a sense and a complaint in the flow of this and i have no way of verifying it but a complaint that the government has been slow and ineffective in really challenging and taking on these Islamist Groups. So despite coordination between the United States and bangladeshi intelligence and legal authorities, there may be may have been a lack of will. At least when you loo