A boy was killed and about 90 others injured today in a rare pre-dawn bomb attack on a Shia procession in front of the community’s main shrine in the Bangladeshi capital as thousands gathered for observing Ashura.
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‘They were preparing to hold the annual Muharram mourning procession when the three bombs were exploded outside the Hossaini Dalan’.
Police arrested three people at the scene, but have released no information about the possible identity of the attackers. “It is a sabotage”, said Dhaka’s senior police official Asaduzzamn Mia.
“We’ve recovered similar IEDs from the Islamist militants in the past”, RAB deputy spokesman Major Maqsudul Alam said.
“Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters that a few quarters were trying to establish an Islamic State-link to the Husseini Dalal blasts with an “ill motive” and they also did the same think previously after the mysterious murders of two foreigners”.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but a suspect has been detained near the blast site, police said.
The incident occurred at a time when the capital is under heightened security arrangements during the Hindu community’s Durga Puja festival, which ended Friday, and Ashura for Shia Muslims on Saturday.
The hard-line Sunni group said that “soldiers of the Caliphate in Bangladesh” detonated explosives in a temple of “polytheists in the city of Dhaka, during the holding of their polytheist rituals”.
The attack came hours after a suicide bombing at a Shia Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province killed at least 12 people.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities have been able to establish that the bombs used were hand-made and were thrown at the Shia gathering. “We took many to the hospitals”.
Shiites are a minority in Bangladesh, but they are generally not discriminated against, and attacks against them are virtually unheard of, reports the Associated Press.
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The killing of four atheist bloggers since the turn of the year undermines the government’s efforts to play down the threat posed by hardliners, experts say.
