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ISIS claims killing of Japanese citizen in Bangladesh

A Japanese citizen shot dead in Bangladesh becomes the second foreigner killed this week. ISIS claimed responsibility .

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Bangladeshi police officials stand guard at the site where a Japanese citizen was shot to death by attackers in Rangpur on October 3, 2015.
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ISIS claimed responsibility for the killing of a Japanese man in Bangladesh on Saturday, in a statement posted on their official Twitter account.

Police in Bangladesh said they had detained four people in connection with the shooting on Saturday of a Japanese citizen, the second foreign national killed in the South Asian nation within a week.

Kunio Hoshi, 65, a Japanese citizen born in Bangladesh, was attacked by unidentified assailants in Kownia in Rangpur district, 335 km north of the capital, Dhaka, and died on the way to hospital, police said. The killing bore some similarities to the shooting death of an Italian working in Bangladesh, Cesare Tavella. ISIS claimed responsibility for that attack, the first such claim the militant group has made in Bangladesh.

"This killing was also carried by three masked men who came by motorcycle and used a pistol, so the motives may be same," said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. "We have detained four persons and are trying to know the motive for the killing," said Farukh Hossain, an additional superintendent of police of Rangpur district.

"We take both the killings seriously and hopefully will be able to identify the killers along with their motives," said Home Minister Asaduzzaman. He said that "killings of foreign citizens are aimed only at bringing down the image of our success and achievements inside and outside the country."

Attacks on foreigners are rare in Bangladesh. But it has seen a rising tide of Islamist violence over the past year, in which four online critics of religious militancy were hacked to death, among them a US citizen of Bangladesh origin.

After Tavella's death, concerns that foreigners might be targeted prompted Western embassies to curtail the movements of diplomats in Bangladesh. Police said one of the four detained people was a rickshaw puller and another is owner of a residence close to where the attack took place.

After the incident, the Japanese embassy in Bangladesh issued an alert for their citizens in the country. "We have encouraged them to exercise a maximum level of vigilance," an embassy official said.

In a separate alert, the South Korean embassy in Bangladesh also asked its citizens to exercise caution and maintain a high level of personal security awareness at all times in all places following the killing of a Japanese citizen this morning. US Ambassador to Bangladesh Marcia Bernicat said in a statement that she was saddened by the latest killing. "I urge the government of Bangladesh to investigate every aspect of this crime and to bring the perpetrators to justice as soon as possible,?" she said.

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