DHAKA: The Daesh group claimed responsibility Friday for a deadly attack on worshippers at a Shiite mosque in northern Bangladesh, as fears grow of a rise in sectarian violence in the mainly Muslim country.

US-based monitoring organization SITE reported the group, which has claimed responsibility for a number of recent attacks in Bangladesh, said it had targeted the Shiite worshippers.

Gunmen burst into the mosque in Shibganj, 200 miles (125 kilometers) north of Dhaka, during early evening prayers on Thursday and opened fire on the gathered worshippers before fleeing.

Police said the muezzin had been killed and three worshippers wounded in the shooting, a rare attack on minority community.

Detectives say they are questioning two people over the shooting, although they had not been formally arrested.

Television footage showed the heavily guarded mosque with broken windows and blood stains on the floor.

Such attacks were until recently virtually unheard of in Bangladesh, which has a large population of mostly moderate Muslims but has suffered a recent upsurge in militancy.

The government says the militant group has no presence in Bangladesh and instead accuses the opposition of trying to destabilize the country of 160 million mainly moderate Muslims. But Bangladesh has been plagued by unrest in the last three years, and experts have warned that a long-running political crisis has radicalized opponents of the government.

The mosque shooting came a day after police shot dead a top member of the banned local outfit Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh accused of hurling grenades at the country’s main Shiite mosque in Dhaka last month, killing two people.

That was believed to be the first attack on Shiites in Bangladesh, though banned militant groups have killed more than a dozen Muslims and attacked Hindus and Christians in the last two years.

Daesh has claimed a series of recent attacks, including the shooting of three foreigners, two of whom died, and the killing of a cleric this month.

But experts have expressed skepticism about the claims.

“Basically what is being described a Daesh attacks in South Asia including Bangladesh, these attacks have had no direct links with Daesh,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.

“What has usually happened is factions or elements within existing terrorist or radicalized groups in these regions have announced a transfer of their loyality to Daesh and have continued to engage with precisely the kind of activities they were doing even before such a transfer.”

Local Shiite leader Mir Zulfiqar Ali said that there was a growing sense of fear among the community.

“We are now concerned as it was the second time an attack came on us. All we can do is to condemn such attacks and ask for extra security from the government at our mosques,” he told AFP.

Bangladesh has been roiled by violence for much of the last three years since a domestic tribunal began delivering its verdicts on opposition figures accused of orchestrating massacres during the 1971 war.

Police have pledged to step up security in the wake of the attack.

Security had already been increased across the country after two top opposition leaders were hanged on Sunday following their conviction for war crimes committed during the 1971 independence conflict against Pakistan.







One of the men executed was Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, who was the official number two in the country’s biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, a senior figure in the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was hanged at the same time at Dhaka’s Central Prison in the capital’s old quarter.