Extremist group says it killed Cesare Tavella, who was shot in Dhaka. If claim is confirmed it would be Isis’s first attack in Bangladesh
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting of an Italian citizen on a street in the diplomatic quarter of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, according to an intelligence group monitoring jihadi threats.
The claim by the extremist group, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria and is intent on expanding its influence across the Muslim world, could not immediately be verified independently. If it was confirmed, it would mark the group’s first attack in the secular south Asian nation.
Bangladesh has been struggling in recent months with the rapid rise of hardline Islamist groups, banning several blamed in the killing of four bloggers this year.
The British and US governments have warned their nationals to be aware of the security threat in Bangladesh following the most recent shooting.
Police in Dhaka said they had no leads in tracing the three unidentified assailants, who, riding on a single motorcycle, drove up alongside Italian citizen Cesare Tavella and shot him on Monday night.
“We have no idea, we can’t say anything definitively for now,” police official Mukhlesur Rahman said, declining to comment on Isis’s claim of responsibility.
There have been worrying signs in recent weeks that extremist groups based in Bangladesh are developing a more international perspective. This month, a hit list of international bloggers believed to have been compiled by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a local group of militants that has claimed responsibility for several murders of secular campaigners and writers in Bangladesh, was circulated on the internet.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/29/isis-claims-responsibility-for-shooting-dead-italian-in-bangladesh
