Relatives of people killed when unidentified gunmen attacked a mosque during evening prayers on Thursday grieve before their funeral in Bangladesh’s Bogra district, Friday, Nov. 27, 2015.
Advertisement
“We have never seen this type of attack on any mosque in the history of Bangladesh”, he said.
“On Friday, we detained two suspects for interrogation”, the police said in a statement.
A group of five assailants stormed the mosque with machine guns, opening fire on worshippers in the Shibganj mosque located about five miles from India’s eastern border.
The attacks, claimed by radical Islamist groups, have alarmed the worldwide community and raised concerns that religious extremism is growing in the traditionally moderate South Asian nation.
Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina earlier this month said “an orchestrated campaign is underway to brand Bangladesh as a country of foreign extremist activities to pave way for foreign military interventions like Pakistan”.
The militant groups, on the other hand, have vowed to convert secular Bangladesh, with a population of 160 million people, into a sharia-based state.
This month the USA state department also issued a travel alert for Bangladesh, saying there was reliable information that terrorist attacks could occur against foreigners.
“Four with gunshot injuries were immediately taken to a local hospital where one – the muezzin – died later”, Arifur Rahman Mondal, Additional Superintendent of police of Bogra, said to VOA by telephone.
Meanwhile, an Italian aid worker and a Japanese man were shot dead, while a Protestant pastor and an Italian Catholic priest narrowly escaped death, also this year.
Advertisement
Bangladesh’s authorities has rejected Islamic State claims of involvement within the assaults and says native militants are concerned. Regardless of the arrests of at least 40 suspected group members, the blog stays active with other administrators who operate from overseas, according to Bangladeshi intelligence. “They were picked up from the area of the attack”, it said, without giving further details.
