DHAKA: The militant Islamic State group claimed responsibility late on Friday for a suspected suicide bomb attack outside the Bangladeshi capital’s main international airport, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications.

A bomber was killed in the blast, police said, the third in a series of suspected attacks and the second claimed by the militant Islamic State group since last week.

The bomb, carried by a man on foot, exploded near a police checkpoint monitoring vehicles heading to Hazrat Shahjahal International Airport in Dhaka.

“The bomb carrier himself was killed,” a Dhaka police spokesman, Yusuf Ali, said.

In an Arabic report, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to US-based monitoring agency SITE Intelligence Group.

“A martyrdom-seeking attack targeted a Bangladeshi police checkpoint near the international airport in the city of Dhaka,” the IS-linked Amaq news agency said.

Dhaka police chief Asaduzzaman Mia denied it was a suicide attack.

“He was carrying it (the bomb) but we can’t confirm yet whether he was trying to attack the check-post,” he said, adding that the bomb carrier was aged around 30.

However, a police officer, who cannot be named, said that they suspected it was a “suicide blast” in which only the “suicide attacker” was killed.

The suspected attack was the third since last Friday, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a camp for the country’s elite security force near the airport.

The attacker was killed and two members of the Rapid Action Battalion, tasked with combating Islamist militancy, were injured.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack but the Bangladeshi government deny the presence of IS in the country and rejected the jihadists’ claim.

IS has also claimed responsibility for a wave of killings since 2015 including for a major attack on a Dhaka cafe last year in which 22 people, including 18 foreign hostages, were killed.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2017