DHAKA: Bangladesh police on Tuesday launched a deadly crackdown on Islamist militants as a 70-year-old Hindu priest became the latest victim in a series of gruesome killings by suspected militants.

Two “high-ranking” members of the Jamayetul Muj­a­hideen Bangladesh (JMB) were shot dead in a gunbattle with security personnel in Dhaka and another was killed in a north-western district, police said.

The two JMB members killed in the capital had roles “in most of the recent attacks” including the bombing of a Shia mosque and the murder of a liberal professor, said deputy commissioner of police M.R Khaled.

The third victim was killed in a gunfight in the town of Godagari in the north-western district of Rajshahi, said local police chief Abu Forhad. The authorities have bla­med homegrown Islamists for the recent attacks, rejecting claims of responsibility from the militant Islamic State (IS) group and a South Asia branch of Al Qaeda.

IS claimed responsibility for murder of the latest victim, Hindu priest Ananda Gopal Ganguly, whose head was nearly severed. The group, through its Amaq news agency, said it “assassinated” the priest, according to the SITE monitoring group, as he was walking to prayers.

Farmers discovered Ganguly’s body in a rice field near his home in the village of Noldanga in the western district of Jhenidah.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2016