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 (210 miles) 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. Islamic State 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," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told Reuters.
"We have detained four persons and are trying to know the motive for the killing," Farukh Hossain, an additional superintendent of police of Rangpur district, told Reuters. "We take both the killings seriously and hopefully will be able to identify the killers along with their motives," Home Minister Asaduzzaman said. 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.