Italian priest shot at in Bangladesh
Dhaka: An elderly Italian priest was today shot at by unidentified motorbike-borne assailants in Bangladesh, wounding him in the neck and skull, in the latest in a series of attacks on foreigners earlier claimed by the dreaded Islamic State.
The 57-year-old priest Piero Parolari, who came to Bangladesh 35 years ago, was cycling down to a Catholic missionary hospital in northern Dinajpur where he also worked as a doctor when the three men fired at him from close range and fled.
He is the second Italian national and the third foreigner to have been attacked in Bangladesh in the past three months.
The attack came after another Italian national, a 50- year-old aid worker Cesare Tavella, was shot and killed on September 28, and a similar attack just five days later on the outskirts of Rangpur city in which a 66-year-old Japanese farmer, Hoshi Kunio, was also killed by unidentified assailants.
Both the attacks on Tavella and Kunio were claimed by the dreaded Islamic State terror group though both the police and the Bangladesh government rubbished the claims, saying the assaults were being carried out by opposition forces that wanted to destabilise the country.
