Bangladesh attacks kill 4 during Eid prayers

Militants on Thursday attacked Bangladeshi police guarding the country’s biggest festival marking the end of Ramadan, killing three people and wounding 14, days after the Daesh claimed a major attack in the capital and warned of more violence.

No group has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack.

An explosion was followed by heavy gunfire between police and militants near a mass prayer ground in Kishoreganj, a district about 100km from the capital of Dhaka.

Armed assailants killed 2 police officers.

After the blast erupted, police fired on the attackers and killed one, assistant police superintendent Tofazzal Hossain said. Fourteen people were injured, including nine policemen. More than a dozen other people were injured with gunshot or bomb shrapnel wounds, including two in critical condition, he said.

Weapons recovered from the scene of the attack, close to where a quarter million people had congregated for Id prayers, included a pistol and machete.

He added that the attackers are “not real Muslims who have engaged in un-Islamic act on Eid” targeting innocent civilians.

Bangladesh has for years struggled to stop a series of deadly hackings of secular thinkers, LGBT activists and religious minorities carried out by Islamist groups.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at an Eid reception at her residence said, “Those who are carrying out assaults even in Eid congregations, are enemies of Islam and humanity”. “The jihad in Bangladesh, the one you are witnessing now, is nothing like anything you have seen before”, said one of them, in his “message” for the Bangladesh government, bdnews24 reported.

“There are certain complaints from the Maulanas of Bangladesh that his (Naik) teachings are not in line with the Quranic teachings and Hadith”, information minister Hasanul Haq Inu said on Wednesday.

The video is the latest since seven young terrorists in their mid 20s, mostly from affluent families, laid siege to the Holey Artisan Bakery and O’ Kitchen Restaurant and slaughtered 20 hostages.

In a statement, the President has said: “I am shocked and distressed to hear about the terrorist attack in Kishoreganj, Bangladesh today on the day of Eid”.

The Islamic scholar said he believes firmly that militants’ “acts of… mayhem and killing indeed go against the spirit of Islam”, and in fact are “attempts to distort the tenets of the Quran”. “They have a political as well as a religious agenda”.

Crude bombs and bullets reigned in Bangladesh on Thursday when radical Islamists were caught in a violent shootout with the Police.