Fourth secular blogger murdered in Bangladesh

A gang armed with machetes hacked a secular blogger to death at his home in Dhaka on Friday in the fourth such murder in Bangladesh since the start of the year, an activist group and police said.

Niloy Neel was murdered after the gang broke into his apartment in the capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network which was alerted to the attack by a witness.

"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him (Neel) to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist militants," the network's head Imran H. Sarker told AFP.

Police confirmed Neel had been murdered but had no details on his background.