DHAKA // At least three people were killed at an Eid prayer rally in Bangladesh on Thursday, as suspected militants carrying bombs and machetes launched another deadly attack in the country.
Days after the mass murder of hostages in Dhaka, authorities said two policemen and a civilian were killed in explosions and gunfire near a prayer ground in the northern district of Kishoreganj.
One of the attackers was also shot dead and four of his suspected accomplices arrested after hand bombs were hurled at police manning a checkpoint just outside the main prayer ground.
“Two policemen, an attacker and a woman who was shot during the [subsequent] gunfight were killed,” said national police spokesman A K M Shahidur Rahman.
“Nine policemen were also injured. They are in a critical condition and have been shifted to a military hospital in Dhaka.”
Weapons recovered from the scene of the attack, close to where a quarter of a million people had been taking part in an Eid gathering, included a pistol and machete.
The prayer gathering in Kishoreganj is by far the biggest such congregation in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim country that is home to around 160 million people.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came less than a week after militants killed 20 hostages and two policemen in an overnight siege at a Western-style restaurant in the capital Dhaka. Many of the victims, who included 18 foreigners, were hacked to death with machetes.
Bangladesh has been on heightened alert since the killings last Friday night and many Eid services have included pleas from religious leaders for an end to the violence.
The cleric who led the Kishoreganj prayer, Maolana Farid Uddin Masuod, has been an outspoken critic of a recent wave of attacks by extremists and strongly condemned Thursday’s killings.
“The young men who think they will go to heaven [by carrying out such attacks] are wrong. They will go straight to hell,” said Mr Masuod.
Many of those who attended services in Dhaka could be seen weeping as clerics led prayers for a more peaceful and prosperous Bangladesh.
The biggest service in the capital was at the National Eidgah Maidan where more than 50,000 people, including Bangladesh’s president Abdul Hamid, took part in prayers under a giant canopy.
Police brought in scanners and sniffer dogs to check for bombs as crowds were forced to wait for up to an hour before being cleared to enter the grounds where the service was held. No one was allowed to bring in bags.
Bangladesh has been reeling from dozens of attacks since the turn of the year, mainly targeting secular activists or religious minorities.
Many of them have been claimed by ISIL or an offshoot of Al Qaeda.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has consistently denied that international militant networks have any presence in Bangladesh, but has been criticised for failing to tackle a rise in Islamic extremism.
After the latest attack Ms Hasina said there was “no place for terrorists” in Bangladesh and urged families to do more to prevent their young from becoming radicalised.
“I urge parents to take steps to bring their missing sons home. We will give them all cooperation to find their missing boys and for their treatment, if necessary,” she said.
Several of the suspects in last Friday’s attack were young men from wealthy Dhaka families who had no idea they were involved in extremism.
Critics have said that Ms Hasina’s administration is in denial about the threat posed by extremists and accuse her of trying to exploit the attacks to demonise her domestic political opponents.
Last month, authorities launched a crackdown on local militants, arresting more than 11,000 people, but critics allege the arrests were arbitrary or designed to silence political opponents.
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.
On Thursday Bangladesh’s information minister Hasanul Haq Inu portrayed the latest attack as being designed to topple Ms Hasina.
“We don’t know which group they belong to but they are suspected members of [an] extremist terrorist group. They are against the normal religious practices of the country,” he said.
* Agence France-Presse
