A Hindu priest was killed in Southern Bangladesh early on Tuesday, the Police has confirmed.
“Ananta Gopal Ganguly, 65, was on his way to a temple in Jhenaidah district when he was attacked around 9 a.m. by unidentified men on a motorbike.
“The priest was cut on the neck and left dead at the scene in the district’s Mohishdanga area, 150 km South-west of Dhaka,’’ police spokesperson, Gopinath Kanjilal, said.
Kanjilal said that the assault was the latest apparent murder by Muslim extremists, and that it came two days after the wife of a counter-terrorism officer was hacked and shot dead in the southern port city of Chittagong.
A Christian grocer was also hacked to death in his shop in the northern district of Natore.
The shop-owner’s killing was claimed by Islamic State, the radical Sunni Muslim group that controls a swathe of Iraq and Syria.
The police said that the counter-terrorism officer’s wife was more likely to have been killed by members of a Bangladeshi militant group.
Three men armed with guns and cleavers beheaded a Hindu priest at a temple in the northern district of Panchagarh on Feb. 21, 2016. The attack was later claimed by the Islamic State.
Muslim majority Bangladesh has experienced a wave of attacks claimed by Islamist militants on secularist writers, teachers, publishers and rights activists, as well as priests and practitioners of minority faiths.
It has left at least 17 people dead since early 2013.
The government has dismissed several claims of responsibility by Islamic State militants and al-Qaeda affiliates, saying local radical groups were believed to be behind most of the attacks.
Leave a Reply