Dhaka: A 70-year-old Buddhist monk was today brutally hacked to death inside a remote monastery in Bangladesh, with police saying the incident bore the hallmark of previous killings of secular activists, bloggers and minorities in the country.

Mawng Shoi Wuu, chief of the monastery located in the isolated and rugged Naikkhangchari area of Bandarban hill district, was found dead this morning by a Buddhist devotee as he went to serve him breakfast, police said.

“The assailants slit his throat…It appears he was murdered sometime after the midnight when he was staying alone at the monastery,” officer-in-charge of Naikkhangchhari police station Kazi Ahsan told PTI over phone. The killing bears the hallmark of previous murders of intellectuals, bloggers and minorities by Islamists in the country. No group has claimed responsibility for the murder of the monk so far and an investigation has been ordered to track down the assailants. The monastery was situated at an isolated area away from the villages in the neighbourhood and Mawng Shoi Wuu used to live there alone, locals said. The latest murder comes exactly a week after a 65-year- old Muslim Sufi preacher was hacked to death in a similar attack by unidentified machete-wielding assailants in northwestern Rajshahi city. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent weeks especially targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. In the recent attacks, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death last month by machete-wielding ISIS militants who slit his throat near his home in Rajshahi city. Two days later, Bangladesh’s first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists. On April 30, a Hindu tailor was also hacked to death by machete-wielding ISIS militants in his shop in central Bangladesh. The ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Indian Peninsula have claimed responsibility for some of the attacks although the government denies their presence in Bangladesh. — PTI