Dhaka: A 70-year-old man was killed and three others injured, including the imam, in Bangladesh today when three gunmen opened fire at worshippers during prayers at a minority Shia mosque.
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“The attackers entered the mosque and opened hearth on the devotees after locking the primary gate after which fled instantly after the capturing”, police official Ahsan Habib stated.
The United States and the United Kingdom have separately expressed deep shock at Thursday’s attack on a Shia mosque in Bogra which left a man dead and several others injured.
Such attacks were until recently virtually unheard of in Bangladesh, which has a large population of mostly moderate Muslims but has suffered a recent upsurge in Islamic militancy. The Sunni extremist group Islamic State claims responsibility, according to the terror monitoring group SITE.
The government rejects those claims and says local militants are involved in the killings. A previously unknown group, Ansar Bangla 7, which intelligence officials believe is part of the banned Ansarullah Bangla Team, claims responsibility.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said after Thursday’s attack that those attacking mosques were not “true Muslims”.
Speaking after the latest attack, local Shia leader Mir Zulfiqar Ali said that there was growing sense of fear among the community.
Some secular writers and Shiite communities in the Sunni-majority nation were also exposed to similar attacks.
They blamed the opposition alliance led by Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami for the attacks. About a dozen Christian priests in the north have also received death threats, a week after an Italian doctor working as a missionary was shot and wounded, police said on Thursday.
Two suspects are being held for questioning, police say.
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The attack on the mosque in Bangladesh triggered a wave of concern among Shi’ites in neighboring India. Dabiq, a magazine of the IS group, has claimed Rahman was the founder of the jihadi movement in Bangladesh.
