The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the July 1 attack on the upmarket Dhaka cafe in which gunmen held hostage mainly Western diners including one American, before killing them.
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“We would fight with Bangladesh to combat terrorism. we have enough experts in this regard and we could help Bangladesh by giving these experts”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said when he called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office today noon.
While officials acknowledge Islamic extremist groups in Bangladesh may have links to outsiders, the government denies that Islamic State is operating there on its own.
He said that Islamic State had wide contacts around the world, including in South Asia, adding: “They are connected to some degree with some of the operatives here, and we made that very clear in our conversations”.
“So I’m confident that our assistance to Bangladesh will increasingly be created to help the government address terrorism threats from domestic and trans-national organisations”, Kerry said. “I do not believe that”, he said.
Last month, a Bangladeshi cafe located in the diplomatic area was stormed by terrorists, who killed 22 people including an Indian girl.
In a speech, Kerry also touched on the need to uphold democratic principles “to defeat terrorists” and expressed concern over upholding the rights of workers.
“Democracy still provides the most resilient and reliable platform we have for preventing and responding to violent extremism”.
Mr. Kerry’s visit to the country came on a day Bangladesh police raided a hideout of the homegrown outlawed militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and shot dead its commander, who was involved in an attack on a temple and a bid to kill an Italian priest previous year, along with his aide.
The suspected fighters, including a regional JMB commander, were killed during a gun battle with security officers in the northern town of Sherpur town, a police spokesperson said.
The shootings came just two days after police killed the suspected mastermind of the cafe attack during a gunbattle outside Dhaka.
Authorities say that after returning from Canada in 2013, Tamim Chowdhury led a faction of the banned militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), blamed for a series of recent attacks on religious minorities.
A series of police raids on suspected militant hideouts have killed at least 26 extremists since the cafe attack.
Critics say Ms Hasina’s administration has been in denial about the nature of the threat posed by extremists and accuse her of trying to exploit the attacks to demonise her domestic opponents.
The jailed activists are mostly from the party of Ms. Hasina’s archrival Khaleda Zia, two-time premier.
Hasina’s government has launched a major crackdown on Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party which it accuses of orchestrating a wave of deadly street violence a year ago in a bid to force the premier to resign.
In India, Kerry is set to attend the seventh meeting of the U.S. -India strategic dialogue.
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He will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, amid rising tensions in the disputed region of Kashmir which is divided between India and its rival neighbour, Pakistan.
