Teenager killed and 100 injured in Bangladesh bomb attack

Earlier on Thursday night, 12 people were killed and more than 20 injured in a suicide blast at a Shi’ite mosque in Quetta city in south-western Balochistan province.

Police cordoned off the area and were investigating the blasts, which they said were caused by improvised explosive devices. “It is sabotage”, said Dhaka’s senior police official Asaduzzamn Mia.

“Local and global gangs are involved in a conspiracy aiming to destablise the country and create panic among people”, he told reporters while visiting a state-run hospital to meet the Shiites wounded in the attack.

Throngs of Sunnis traditionally join their Shiite neighbors, a tiny minority in Bangladesh, as they weave through the narrow streets of Old Dhaka for the commemoration.

Police said about 80 people were injured in the attack on the 17th-century religious site, at least one critically.

Police were questioning three suspects detained after the blasts and examining closed-circuit television footage for clues, Dhaka police spokesman Muntasirul Islam said.

Sajjad Hossain Saju, 14, said Nazimunnesa, deputy director of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, was killed.

“I don’t think extremists or Sunni sympathizers launched the attack”, Miah said, although he did not elaborate.

“We’ve been observing this mourning procession here for centuries”.

“Another police officer familiar with the investigations said they tracked down 31 people, a few of them belonging to ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia’s BNP and its crucial ally fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami from the capital and northwestern Bogra in connection with the ASI murder”. Experts say the crackdown has left a few of the country’s more hardline Muslims feeling alienated, and has led to a resurgence in Islamist group activity.

The bombing comes just weeks after an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer were shot dead in attacks claimed by the Islamic State.

The attack came as minority Shi’ite Muslims marked Ashura, a 10-day ritual in which they commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.