A 70-year-old Buddhist monk was hacked to death inside a monastery in southeast Bangladesh, as the Muslim-majority country reels under a series of brutal killings of secular activists and minorities by Islamists.
Mawng Shoi Wuu, chief of the monastery located in the isolated and rugged Naikkhangchari area of Bandarban hill district, was found dead this morning by a Buddhist devotee as he went to serve him breakfast, police said.
"The assailants slit his throat... it appears he was murdered sometime after the midnight when he was staying alone at the monastery," officer-in-charge of Naikkhangchhari police station Kazi Ahsan said.
The killing bears the hallmark of previous murders of intellectuals, bloggers and minorities by Islamists in the country.
The latest murder comes exactly a week after a 65-year- old Muslim Sufi preacher was hacked to death in a similar attack by unidentified machete-wielding assailants in northwestern Rajshahi city.
No group has claimed responsibility for the murder of the monk so far and an investigation has been ordered to track down the assailants.
The monastery was situated at an isolated area away from the villages in the neighbourhood and Mawng Shoi Wuu used to live there alone, locals said.
There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent weeks especially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners.
In the recent attacks, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death last month by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat near his home in Rajshahi city.
Two days later, Bangladesh's first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.
On April 30, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death by machete-wielding ISIS militants in his shop in central Bangladesh.
