Third secular blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

A secular blogger has been hacked to death by machete wielding attackers in Bangladesh today, in the third fatal attack of its kind this year.

Ananta Bijoy Das died after being attacked by four assailants in the northeastern Sylhet district, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters.

Das was a 33-year-old banker who was known to have written blogs for the website Mukto-Mona, a site which promotes rationalism and opposing fundamentalism.

The website's landing page was black and bore the message "we are united in our grief and we remain undefeated":

The attack on Das is the third attack on a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months and follows the deaths of Mukto-Mona founder Avijit Roy in February and atheist blogger Washiqur Rahman in March.

Roy was hacked to death while returning with his wife from a Dhaka book fair and Rahman was killed in a similar fashion on a busy Dhaka street after airing his outrage over Roy's death on social media.