DHAKA — The wife of a senior Bangladeshi police official known for battling militants was stabbed and shot to death on Sunday, and machete-wielding assailants killed a Christian grocer in a separate incident.
Both attacks appeared to be the work of militants who have killed at least 30 people, including religious minorities, liberal bloggers and academics, since February last year, police said.
Three assailants riding a motorcycle stabbed and then shot Mahmuda Aktar, 33, while she was on her way to put her son onto a school bus near her home in the southeastern port city of Chittagong, police said.
“She was stabbed first. Then they shot her in the head three times,” Humayan Kabir, deputy police commissioner of Chittagong, said.
Her husband, police superintendent Babul Aktar, has played an important role in cracking down on militants in the region.
“Babul Aktar is an efficient police officer and played a key role in apprehending militants. They might have killed his wife because they failed to get him,” Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.
Aktar busted several hideouts of the banned group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen. His team also arrested one of the group’s leaders, who was later killed in a grenade blast during a police raid in October.
The government has launched a crackdown on militant groups in the country.
In Sunday’s other killing, Sunil Gomes, a 60-year-old shopkeeper, was hacked to death in his shop in the northern district of Natore, local police official Manirul Islam said.
Daesh claimed responsibility for killing Gomes, according to the US-based monitoring service SITE. — Reuters
