The European Union's ambassador to Bangladesh, Pierre Mataudon, on Tuesday described the killing of Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella in Dhaka on Monday as a "savage" and a "terrorist crime".
Gunmen aboard a motorbike fired three bullets at 50-year-old Tavella, while he was out jogging in the diplomatic quarter of the Bangladesh capital, according to local media reports.
The so-called Islamic State Sunni militant group took credit for the murder, according to the US-based monitoring group SITE. The claim could not immediately be verified independently but if confirmed would mark the group’s first attack in the secular south Asian nation.
Bangladeshi Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kama said Tuesday investigators were probing the killing at that "up to now" there was no proof that IS were behind Monday's murder.
"We are investigating the killing. Up to now the investigation bodies have not found a link between IS and the murder,"Kama told journalists.
In its claim of Tavella's killing, IS said a “security detachment” had tracked and killed Tavella with “silenced weapons” in Dhaka, according SITE’s website.
The message warned that “citizens of the crusader coalition” would not be safe in Muslim nations, SITE said.
Almost 90 percent of Bangladesh’s 160 million inhabitants are Muslim.
Bangladesh has been struggling in recent months with the rapid rise of hardline Islamist groups, banning several blamed in the killing of four bloggers this year.
