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DHAKA, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Two persons including an editor of a magazine were on Monday hacked to death by unidentified assailants in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, hours after a prison guard was shot dead in a separate incident.
A police official says at least five machete-wielding assailants forcibly entered the house of Zulhas Mannan who used to edit "Rupban," Bangladesh's first magazine for the LGBT community, at about 5:00 p.m. (local time) in central Dhaka's Kalabagan area.
The assailants stabbed them indiscriminately, leaving two including Mannan and his friend Tanoy dead and two including a security guard critically injured, said the official who preferred to be unnamed.
He said the assailants managed to flee the scene immediately on motorbikes.
The motive behind the attack could not be immediately known.
The official suspects the involvement of militants in the killing of USAID local staff Zulhas Mannan, who previously worked as a protocol officer in the U.S. embassy in Dhaka, and his friend.
Earlier in the day a prison guard was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in front of Bangladesh's Kashimpur Jail in Gazipur on the outskirts of capital Dhaka.
Monday's attacks occurred days after suspected extremists killed a university professor in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district, some 256 km northwest of capital Dhaka.
Rajshahi University's English Department Professor AFM Rezaul Karim Siddiquee was hacked to death on Saturday morning by unidentified assailants.
A number of secularist writers, bloggers and publishers in Bangladesh have been killed or seriously injured in attacks perpetrated by Islamist extremists since 2013.
Two secular writers and publishers were targeted, and one killed in last year.
No organization has yet claimed involvement in the Monday's attacks, but militants have claimed responsibility for the past murders including one earlier this month.
On April 6 Nazimuddin Samad, 28, a law student at Dhaka's Jagannath University, was shot and hacked to death by unidentified assailants.
