A suspected Islamist
militant was killed on Saturday in a shootout in Bangladesh, police said, days
after he critically wounded a Hindu college teacher in the latest attack on
minority groups.
Ghulam
Faijullaha Fahim, 19, who was in police custody, was shot when officers took
him with them to help capture his associates, said Sarwar Hossain, police chief
of Madaripur, 70 km (44 miles) south of the capital, Dhaka.
"He
was caught in crossfire that erupted after miscreants started
shooting at the police," he said, adding that Fahim was dead on
arrival at a hospital.
Mathematics
teacher Ripon Chakraborty was attacked on Wednesday by Fahim and two other
knife-wielding assailants when he answered the doorbell at his home in
Madaripur.
Fahim
was caught by people who rushed to the rescue of the screaming teacher and his
family, and was handed over to the police. He told them the attack had been
planned by members of the banned militant group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Militants have killed more than 30 people since
early last year, ranging from atheist bloggers and liberal academics to gay
rights campaigners, foreign aid workers, members of minority Muslim sects
and other religious groups.
The
Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have claimed responsibility for most of the
killings, but the government denies that either has a presence in Bangladesh, a
majority Muslim country of 160 million.
Police
blame home-grown militants from groups such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Ansarullah
Bangla Team.
At
least 11 suspected militants have been killed in shootouts since November,
including five earlier this month, as the authorities step up a hunt for
Islamists to stop a wave of deadly attacks.
More
than 100,000 Islamic scholars and clerics on Saturday issued a fatwa against
militancy in the name of Islam.
On
Saturday, police recovered a large cache of firearms, including 108 pistols and
1,000 bullets, from a canal on the outskirts of Dhaka.
More
than 11,000 people, including about 200 suspected militants, have been arrested
in a week-long crackdown on Islamists that ended on Friday.
Representative
Image
Source: Reuters
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