Four killed at largest Bangladesh Eid gathering; this isn’t Islam, says Sheikh Hasina

Speaking at an Eid event, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina referred to the recent terror strikes and said, “This is not the way of Islam. Terrorism will never be tolerated in Bangladesh. The government will do everything to establish peace.”

READ: NSG team goes to Bangladesh to study terror strikes

Police said they have arrested one suspect for the latest attack, which took place at around 10 am. They added that nine of the injured were policemen who were evacuated to Dhaka’s military hospital.

Bangladeshi policemen arrive near the scene of a blast in Kishoreganj, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, July 7, 2016. Islamic extremists hurled homemade bombs and engaged in a gunbattle with police guarding a large Eid prayer at the end of the holy Muslim month Thursday morning. The violence comes just days after a deadly hostage crisis at a restaurant in Dhaka. (AP Photo)

According to officials, a group of six to eight assailants led the attack when policemen were frisking people into the Eidgah ground. They attacked the policemen with machetes and threw some Molotov cocktail-style bombs at them.
Kishoreganj Sadar Police Station Officer-in-Charge Mizanul Haque told local media that a constable of his barracks, Jahirul, died in the attack and several others were injured. The woman who was killed belonged to the Hindu community, said government sources in Dhaka.

READ: All you need to know about Sholakia Eidgah

Lakhs of people, who had gathered at Sholakia to offer Eid prayers, were trapped in the middle of firing between cops and miscreants.

The ground on seven acres of the bank of the Narosunda River was originally donated by Dewan Hazrat Khan Bahadur, the sixth descendent of Isha Khan, the ruler of Bengal of the Baro-Bhuiyan stock.

In this image made from video provided by Jamuna TV, injured people are assisted after a militant attack in Kishoreganj, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, July 7, 2016. Islamic extremists hurled homemade bombs and engaged in a gunbattle with police guarding a large Eid prayer at the end of the holy Muslim month Thursday morning. The violence comes just days after a deadly hostage crisis at a restaurant in Dhaka. (Jamuna TV via AP Video)

The first Eid assembly in Sholakia was held in 1828 where 125,000 devotees were said to have said their prayers.

The name Sholakia is possibly a derivation from the first gathering which in Bengali sounds like ‘shoa-lakhia’ or 1.5 lakh.

The incident comes a day after an Islamic State video went viral on social media in Bangladesh, in which two of them were identified as having gone to top private and government eduational institutions, and one of them was working in a prominent telecom company.

The Islamic State released a video on SITE Intelligence site on Tuesday. “It was a glimpse…will repeat,” the young men said in the video, in which one had his face covered, while two others were bearded.

The video begins with Islamic State propaganda messages, with captions in Bangla, and boasts of death tolls from numerous terror attacks claimed by IS. “The jihad in Bangladesh, the one you are witnessing now, is nothing like anything you have seen before,” said one of them, in his ‘message’ for the Bangladesh government.