ISIL says it guns down Italian in Bangladesh

DHAKA // The ISIL group has claimed responsibility for gunning down an Italian aid worker in the diplomatic quarter of Bangladesh’s capital, according to an intelligence group that monitors militant threats.

If confirmed, it would the extremist group’s first attack in Bangladesh, a secular country with a predominantly Muslim population. The South Asian nation has been struggling in recent months with the rapid rise of hard-line Islamic groups, banning several that have been blamed for killing four bloggers this year.

Police said they had no leads in tracing the three unidentified assailants who, riding on a single motorcycle, drove up alongside Italian citizen Cesare Tavella and shot him Monday night.

“We have no idea, we can’t say anything definitively for now,” police official Mukhlesur Rahman said, declining to comment on the ISIL claim of responsibility.

Initial evidence suggested the attack was planned. Police noted that nothing had been taken from Tavella during the attack.

ISIL said in a statement dated Monday that a “security detachment” had tracked and killed Tavella with “silenced weapons” in Dhaka, according to Site intelligence group. It was not immediately clear how close the witnesses were to the attack or how the gunshots could have been heard if a silencer was used.

ISIL warned that “citizens of the crusader coalition” would not be safe in Muslim nations. Almost 90 per cent of Bangladesh’s 160 million people are Muslim.

* Associated Press