Secular publisher killed, 3 others injured in Bangladesh attacks

Dhaka - Faisal Arefin Dipan was murdered at his office in central Dhaka, while Ahmed Rahim Tutul and two writers were attacked in the office of publishing house Shudhdhoswar.

A Bangladeshi publisher who worked with atheist writers was hacked to death in the capital Dhaka on Saturday, an activist said, just hours after two secular bloggers and another publisher were attacked in a separate incident.
Faisal Arefin Dipan was murdered at his office in central Dhaka, Imran Sarker, who heads a secular bloggers group, said.
"He was hacked to death. I saw him dead," he said.
Police confirmed that Dipan was seriously injured in the attack and was brought to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
"They still have not declared whether he is dead," said police inspector Mozammel Haq.
Dipan is the son of a noted Bangladesh writer Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq and owns Jagritee Publishers.
Earlier on Saturday, two writers and a publisher were stabbed and shot at a publishing house in Dhaka, police said.
At least four atheist bloggers have been murdered in country this year.
Three men entered the office of publishing house Shudhdhoswar and attacked the writers and the publisher, said police officer Abdullah Al Mamun.
Local police chief Jamal Uddin Meer said the attackers then locked the wounded men inside the office before escaping. "We had to break the lock to recover them," Meer said.
The publisher, Ahmed Rahim Tutul, was a close friend of Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus while walking with his wife in February. Tutul was also the publisher of Roy's books.
The two writers who were attacked on Saturday were identified by police as Ranadeep Basu and Tareque Rahim.
All three were hospitalised, and Tutul was in critical condition, Meer said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The local group Ansarullah Bangla Team had claimed the blogger killings.
Earlier this month, a bomb attack targeted Bangladesh's Shias. An Italian aid worker and a Japanese agricultural worker were also killed in separate attacks. The Daesh group claimed all three of those attacks, but Bangladesh's government rejected that the extremist group had any presence in the country.
The government has instead blamed domestic militants along with Islamist political parties - specifically the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its main ally, Jamaat-e-Islami - for orchestrating the violence to destabilise the already fractious nation.