DHAKA // Two activists were hacked to death on Monday at an apartment in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, police said.
Their deaths were the latest in a series of attacks targeting secular bloggers and liberal activists.
One of the dead was a leading gay rights activist and magazine editor. The other victim was a Bangladeshi national working for the US embassy in Dhaka, the US ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat said.
The ambassador said she was “devastated by the brutal murder”.
The killings come two days after a professor was hacked to death in the city of Rajshahi.
ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the 58-year-old had been slain for “calling for atheism”.
But Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said “local militants” were responsible.
ISIL has in recent months claimed responsibility for the killing of Christians, Hindu priests and members of the minority Sufi, Ahmadi and Shiite faiths.
The local Al Qaeda branch has also claimed the murders of secular bloggers and activists, including the killing this month of a 26-year-old atheist law student.
Bangladesh police, however, said the local outfits, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh and Ansarullah Bangla Team, of being behind the killings.
*Agence France-Presse
