Two Bangladeshi policeman were killed and nine other officers were wounded on Thursday in a grenade attack on a security checkpoint in a town hosting Bangladesh’s biggest congregation on Eid, officials said.
The attack on the police position was close to an area where some 200,000 people had gathered for Eid prayers in Kishoreganj town, about 140km (90 miles) northeast of the capital, Dhaka, said district administrator Zillur Rahman.
Two of the attackers were killed and one has been captured alive, a police official said.
The militants attacked police with “sharp weapons” after the grenades exploded, another senior district official said.
The attack had been brought under control.
“We are still checking for other miscreants but after this incident prayers were held peacefully and we have asked everyone to go home,” Rahman said.
The gathering in Kishoreganj is known as the Sholakia Eid prayers and is by far the biggest such congregation in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim country that is home to around 160 million people.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, it came less than a week after Islamists killed 20 hostages and two policemen in an overnight siege at a Western-style cafe in Dhaka. All the victims, including 18 foreigners, were hacked to death with machetes.
Bangladesh has been on a heightened state of alert in the wake of the killings in Dhaka last Friday night and many Eid services included pleas from religious leaders for an end to the violence.
“Allah, protect our country … and protect our children from the evils of terrorism,” Mohammad Sadequl Islam, the local imam, told a gathering of around 5,000 devotees at Dhaka’s Mahakhali neighbourhood.
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 a growing wave of attacks since the turn of the year, many of which have been claimed by the self-styled Islamic State group or an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda network.
However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina‘s government has consistently denied international jihadist networks have gained a foothold and have said the weekend attack in Dhaka was carried out by a local Islamist group.
Bangladesh’s information minister Hasanul Haq Inu again portrayed the latest attack as being designed to topple Hasina.
“We don’t know which group they belong to but they are suspected members of extremist terrorist group. They are against the normal religious practices of the country,” he said.
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