Bangladesh plagued by grisly terror attacks for 3 years

Bangladesh plagued by grisly terror attacks for 3 years

  

Local media outlets are reporting that a group of nine attackers have taken hostages inside a Bangladesh restaurant in a diplomatic zone in the country's capital. Wochit

 

The deaths are the latest in a series of dozens of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked murders, often by hacking or stabbing but sometimes by shooting, mostly targeting writers, activists, foreigners and religious minorities in the majority Muslim country.

 

Salma Muktadir, 34, an ad agency copywriter in Dhaka, said Friday's attack appears to be a high-profile escalation of the Islamist attacks in the South Asian country.

 

“Rampant attacks on bloggers, liberal intellectuals and minority Hindus and Christians suggest that the Islamic fundamentalists have penetrated society,” she said.

 

Over the past 18 months, 48 killings have been blamed on Islamic militants, with more than half claimed by the Islamic State, according to SITE. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the majority of the others.

The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for last month's hacking death of a Hindu priest, a Hindu monastery worker and a Christian grocer.

 

In April, the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar-al-Islam group claimed responsibility for stabbing to death Xulhaz Mannan, a U.S. government employee and editor of an LGBT magazine, and friend Tanay Majumder in Dhaka. In a Twitter message, the group said it targeted the two because they were “pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh” and were “working day and night to promote homosexuality."

The killings, which came just days after a university professor was hacked to death, drew calls for government action from Amnesty International.

 

"It is shocking that no one has been held to account for these horrific attacks and that almost no protection has been given to threatened members of civil society," Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director said in a statement at the time. "Bangladeshi authorities have a legal responsibility to protect and respect the right to life. They must urgently focus their energies on protecting those who express their opinions bravely and without violence, and bringing the killers to justice.”