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Bangladesh beefs up security after ISIL attack

Reuters

Bangladesh stepped up security for foreign diplomats and citizens in October 2015 after the killing of two foreigners within a week in attacks claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The terrorist group has vowed similar further assaults in the Muslim-majority nation.

Japanese citizen Kunio Hoshi, 65, was gunned down by three masked men on a motorcycle while on his way to visit a grass farm project in the northern district of Rangpur, an attack similar to the shooting of Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella.

Attacks on foreigners are rare in Bangladesh. The country has been convulsed by a rising tide of Islamist violence over the past year in which four online critics of religious militancy were hacked to death, a U.S. citizen among them.

“Extra forces have been deployed at foreign diplomats and citizens’ homes and workplaces across the country,” Muntasirul Islam, a deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told Reuters.

Police have not confirmed that ISIL, which has ambitions to spread into South Asia, is behind the two attacks. Dhaka police arrested two suspected recruiters for the hard-line Islamist group during the past year.

ISIL was warning of more attacks.

“There will continue to be a series of ongoing security operations against nationals of crusader coalition countries, they will not have safety or a livelihood in Muslim lands,” the group tweeted.

After Tavella’s killing in the Gulshan neighborhood, home to several embassies, concerns that foreigners might be targeted prompted Western embassies to curtail the movements of diplomats in Bangladesh.

The violence could pose a fresh threat to Bangladesh’s U.S. $25 billion garment export industry, the economic lifeblood of the country of 160 million people.

Western buyers had begun to cancel visits after Tavella’s shooting, said Shahidullah Azim, a garment exporter. “One of my American buyers also canceled his Dhaka visit during peak time, when buyers are supposed to place more orders,” he told Reuters.

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