Suspected Islamists kill third blogger in Bangladesh since February

Ananta Bijoy Das died instantly after a gang of masked men attacked him with machetes near his house this morning

Suspected Islamists today hacked to death a secular blogger near his home in northeastern Bangladesh, the third such deadly attack since February in the Muslim-majority nation.

Ananta Bijoy Das died instantly after a gang of masked men attacked him with machetes near his house at Subidbazar area in Sylhet city this morning while he was on the way to his office, police said.

"They (killers) attacked him from behind...He was hit with machetes on the head and visibly died instantly," an eyewitness told PTI from the scene.

A close friend of Das, Shahiduzzaman Paplu, told media that he was known for his writing on "materialism and logic" in blogs. He had also written the preface of a book authored by Avijit Roy, who was the first victim of deadly attack on so-called "atheist bloggers" by the suspected Islamists this year.

Machete wielding assailants in February killed 45-year old Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US national, here while his wife narrowly escaped the attack.

The murder of Das comes just a week after Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Roy. Authorities have launched an investigation into the attacks on the bloggers.

A month after Roy's killing, another blogger Oyasiqur Rahman was murdered in similar fashion in Dhaka but people in the neighbourhood nabbed two suspected killers from the scene and handed them over to police.

Bangladesh is officially a secular country but 90% of its 160 million population are Muslims.