Masked men with machetes hacked to death a prominent blogger and author Tuesday, near his home in northeastern Bangladesh, police said.
This marks the third fatal attack by masked men on authors this year in the country.
Ananta Bijoy Das died immediately after being attacked in the city of Sylhet. He was on his way to work at a bank, said Rahmat Ullah, police commissioner in Sylhet.
Ullah said the blogger was attacked by at least four masked men. “We don’t have details, we are looking into it,” he said.
While it was not immediately clear why Das was targeted, Islamic extremists are likely responsible. He was reportedly close to Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer who was executed in February by Islamist extremists.
Das wrote for Roy’s popular blog Mukto-mona, or Free Mind, which featured articles on scientific reasoning and religious extremism. Das also edited a science magazine and wrote several books which are frowned upon by extreme Islamists.
Roy wrote strongly against religious fundamentalism and was attacked along with his wife on the streets of Dhaka, the capital, when he returned from the United States. His wife survived the attack although she was severely injured.
Another blogger, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, died in March after also being attacked by Islamic radicals.