Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today dismissed the Islamic State's claims of shooting dead two foreigners within a week, saying the Opposition BNP-Jamaat alliance has killed them to "tarnish" her government's image.
A day after a 66-year-old Japanese national was shot dead by masked gunmen, authorities stepped up security of foreign diplomats and deployed heavily-armed police officers to guard the capital's diplomatic zone, amid calls by the US and the EU to quickly bring the perpetrators to justice.
"We have still not found any involvement (of ISIS). We have to investigate," Hasina told reporters at Ganabhaban, her official residence in the capital, after arriving from New York where she attended the 70th UN General Assembly session.
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Describing the murders of the Japanese and an Italian nationals as "clearly planned and politically motivated", she said the killings were part of a conspiracy to "tarnish the image" of her government.
"There is no reason to believe that all our achievements will be overshadowed by these heinous murders, but that is what is being attempted," she said.
The BNP-Jamaat have "definitely abetted these murders in an attempt to overshadow Bangladesh's achievements", she said.
Hasina, however, said Bangladesh has witnessed homegrown radicalism in the past when elements like the outlawed Jamaatul Mujahideen (JMB), Harkatul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) emerged during the past regime of her archrival Khaleda Zia's BNP-led rightwing alliance government with fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami being its key partner.
She said that the murders of foreigners have taken place at a time when the war crimes trials are taking place.
The trials involve top Jamaat leaders who were opposed to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971. Some Jamat leaders have already been sentenced to death.
Police, meanwhile, stepped up security in the capital's diplomatic zone. Heavily-armed officers patrolled key roads and entry points in the wake of the latest murder.
The government has boosted security of foreign diplomats and foreigners across the country, police said.
Elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), armed police and plainclothesmen kept an eye on traffic movement setting up makeshift check posts at thoroughfares of the upmarket Gulshan district where most of the foreign embassies are housed.
Bikers were specially checked as the assailants had used motorbikes in murdering both the foreign nationals, Italian aid official Cesare Tavella in Dhaka and Japanese businessman Kunio Hoshi in northwestern Rangpur.
"Not only at the diplomatic zone, we have enforced the vigil also at places where the foreign nationals live," police headquarters spokesman Nazrul Islam told PTI.
He added "We have set up check posts, installed more CCTV cameras and mobilised plainclothesmen alongside our units in uniforms so that nothing goes beyond our security scans".
