Unidentified assailants on Saturday shot and killed a Japanese man in northern Bangladesh, police said, the second foreigner in a week to be gunned down in the South Asian country.
The incident took place at Mahiganj Village in Rangpur district, said Rezaul Karim, a police official.
Details about the victim’s identity or his workplace were not immediately known, though local television station Channel 24 said he worked at a farm in Rangpur, AP reported.
The man’s body was taken to a state-run hospital in the district.
Saturday’s killing took place five days after an Italian aid worker was killed by bike-riding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack. The government, however, dismissed the claim, saying there was no evidence. It described the killing as an “isolated incident.”
The Italian aid worker, Cesare Tavella, had been working in Dhaka for a Netherlands-based church cooperative, serving as program manager for a project focusing on food security and economic development for people living in rural areas in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh, a secular country with a predominantly Muslim population, has been struggling in recent months with the rapid rise of hard-line groups, banning several that have been blamed for killing four bloggers this year.
Mahiganj Village is about 300 kilometers north of Dhaka.
