DHAKA (Bangladesh) Unidentified men hacked to death a Christian grocer in Bangladesh’s north-west on Sunday (June 5), say international media reports. The numbers of attacks on religious minorities and secular activists by Islamist militants are growing.

“Sunil Gomes was hacked to death at his grocery store just near a church at Bonpara village,” Shafiqul Islam, deputy police chief of Natore district where the murder took place, told AFP.

Another police officer, Inspector Abdur Razzak, said the motive for the killing of 65-year-old the Mr Gomes was unclear. But the attack was similar to those on Hindus, Buddhists and members of other religious minorities in Muslim-majority yet ‘secular’Bangladesh in recent months.

The murder came just hours after the wife of a top anti-terror police officer was stabbed and shot dead in the south-eastern city of Chittagong.

Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of grisly murders of liberals, secular activists and religious minorities. A Hindu trader was hacked to death last week, days after a homoeopathic doctor was also slaughtered along with a Buddhist monk.

Police say more than 40 people have been killed by home-grown Islamists in the past three years, with a spike in attacks in recent weeks.

International jihadists such as the Islamic State organisation and Al-Qaeda’s South Asia wing have claimed responsibility for most of the murders, but Bangladesh authorities deny these groups are present in the country. Observers criticize this as ‘ostrich-like’ behaviour.

Bangladesh’s secular government blames its political rivals instead. Experts say a government crackdown on opponents, including a ban on the largest Islamist party following a protracted political crisis, is pushing many towards extremism.

  Bangladesh, Chittagong District, Christian, Islamist militants, naked truth, terrorist