Blast kills police officer in Bangladesh, injures others

A police constable was killed in the explosion. A female bystander was also killed in the crossfire. This is the second terrorist attack in a week occurring in Bangladesh.

“They first threw a small bomb targeting police and then attacked them with machetes”.

Six other officers were seriously wounded, said a police inspector, Mueid Chowdhury, but they were expected to survive. “The congregation was not affected by the clashes”, he said.

The prayer gathering in Kishoreganj is by far the biggest such congregation in Bangladesh. All the victims, including 18 foreigners, were hacked to death with machetes.

Police lead a suspect away after militants attacked Bangladeshi police guarding an Eid festival in Kishoreganj town in this still frame taken from video July 7, 2016.

In a telephone interview with The Hindu, within hours of Thursday’s attack in Kishoreganj district in north-east Bangladesh which killed three people, Mr. Khan said the attackers are “local boys”.

“That was probably a crude bomb”.

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”.

Numerous attacks have been claimed by Islamic State militants or al-Qaeda affiliates, although the government has blamed local groups and the opposition instead.

The State Department is warning Americans against travel to Bangladesh.

“Uploading, sharing, commenting or liking any video, images or speech in social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, in support of the Islamic State (in Iraq and Syria) or militancy is a punishable offence”, Deputy Inspector-General of police A.K.M. Shahidur Rahman said.

While Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has expressed her shock at the attack on a religious group converged for namaz, her government has insisted that all the attacks are being carried out by a Bangladeshi banned terror group. It said last week’s gruesome attack on the cafe was just “a glimpse”. “You cannot stop this jihad until we come victorious defeating you, and the caliphate is established across the world”, said the man.

Speaking to TOI from Dhaka, Hasanul Haq Inu, information minister, said, “These attackers are monsters in the garb of Islamism”.

“We have been able to capture three attackers, they are being interrogated now”. “Islam is a religion of peace. They have a political as well as a religious agenda”. Critics say that the government has used the arrest sweeps as an excuse to detail Hasina’s political opponents.