Bangladesh editor hacked to death

Police in Bangladesh say unidentified assailants have stabbed two men to death, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the US Agency for International Development.

Mohammed Iqbal, police officer-in-charge in Dhaka’s Kalabagan area, identified the activist as Xulhaz Mannan and said he previously worked as a protocol officer for a former US ambassador to Bangladesh.

He said the other victim of yesterday’s attack was a friend of Mannan’s named Tanay Majumder.

Iqbal said Mannan was an editor of Bangladesh’s first gay rights magazine Roopbaan.

The killings occurred two days after unidentified men hacked to death a university professor in a north-western city.

The attack was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers by radical Islamists in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

A spokesman for a gay group, Boys of Bangladesh, confirmed to AFP by text message that the Roopbaan editor was among the dead.

The editor was behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, Bengali New Year.

However, police this year banned the rally as part of widespread security measures.