A policeman checks a man’s bag in Dhaka. Police have intensified security after suspected hardline Islamists hacked to death four secular bloggers and a publisher of secular books this year.

AFP
Dhaka
A prominent Bangladeshi academic and other secular writers, bloggers and intellectuals have been given increased security, police said yesterday, amid fears they could be the next victims of violence blamed on Islamic militants.
Tensions are running high in Bangladesh after suspected hardline Islamists hacked to death four secular bloggers and a publisher of secular books this year.
Anisuzzaman, a university professor known for supporting secular writers and who goes by one name, alerted police after receiving a death threat via an anonymous text message, a police spokesman said.
“We’ve provided security to those who’ve informed us that they’re facing security risks,” Dhaka metropolitan police spokesman Muntashirul Islam said, adding that police were also acting on tipoffs.
The comments come after a branch of Al Qaeda allegedly published a hit-list of 34 top Bangladeshi writers, bloggers, actors, secular activists and intellectuals on a little-known website over the weekend.
“They must die. Our all Mujahideen, this is our duty to slash their head,” the statement said. Some of those named live in Europe.
“We’re trying to find out who posted it and from where,” Islam said.
Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent (AQIS) has claimed responsibility for the bloggers’ murders. The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the recent killings of an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer, further stoking concerns of rising Islamist violence in the Muslim-majority country.
But the government has denied that IS operates in Bangladesh and blamed all of the attacks on local militants along with the main opposition party and its Islamist ally, accusing them of orchestrating violence to destabilise the country.
US ISSUES TRAVEL ALERT: Foreigners may be attacked again in Bangladesh, the US State Department said in a travel warning on Tuesday that urged Americans to be cautious and vigilant in that country, Reuters reports from Washington.
A Japanese citizen was shot dead in Bangladesh on October 3 and an Italian aid worker was killed in the same manner in the capital Dhaka on September 28 in attacks claimed by the
Islamic State militant group.
“There is reliable information to suggest that terrorist attacks could occur against foreigners in Bangladesh, including against large gatherings of foreigners,” the State Department said in a travel alert that cited the two killings as well as the October 24 bombing of a Shia religious procession.
“During 2015 there has been a series of threats and terrorist attacks targeting writers, publishers, and others in the media, including the murder of a US citizen blogger,” it added. “The US government assesses that the terrorist threat remains real and credible, and further attacks are possible.”
Attacks on foreigners are relatively rare in Bangladesh, despite a rising tide of Islamist violence over the past year that has seen four online critics of religious militancy hacked to death, among them a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin.