At least one of the bombs exploded during the prayer meeting, where hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in the district of Kishoreganj, about 90 kilometres north of the capital of Dhaka, for the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.
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US President Barack Obama has condemned the July 1 terror attack in the Bangladeshi capital which claimed the lives of 18 foreign nationals, including seven Japanese, and in a letter on Friday to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Washington stands with Dhaka, Tokyo and the global community in its fight against terrorism.
Six police officers who were seriously wounded were shifted to the Dhaka CMH hospital, while a civilian woman caught in the gun battle died at the spot.
A bomb was detonated at a school police were using as a checkpoint before Molotov cocktails were thrown and gunfire was exchanged between terrorists and police, killing four and injuring seven on Thursday. Nine Italians were killed in Friday’s attack and Italy’s foreign minister said in Rome on Thursday the ISIS claim was credible. Bangladesh’s main Islamist party has been banned from contesting polls and most of its leaders have been arrested or else executed after recent trials over their role in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Several of the suspects in last week’s cafe attack were young men from wealthy Dhaka families who had no idea they were involved in Islamist extremism.
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”. “It is their strategy to create panic”.
“Social media has become a fertile ground for recruiting militants”, the head of the telecoms regulator Shahjahan Mahmood told AFP.
It was one of the deadliest attacks ever in Bangladesh, where al Qaeda and Islamic State have made competing claims for a series of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the past year.
Speaking both Bengali and English, the man in the video said Bangladesh must know that it was now part of a bigger battlefield to establish the cross-border “caliphate”, proclaimed by the group in 2014. “We have to unite to fight them”.
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”.
“We have been able to capture three attackers, they are being interrogated now”.
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Rahman said the attack had been brought under control. “They are against the normal religious practices of the country”, he told AFP.
