Forty-three-year-old Bangladeshi publisher Faisal Dipan, who worked with slain atheist writer and blogger Avijit Roy, was hacked to death by unidentified assailants in Dhaka on Saturday. Police officials said the attack occurred shortly after two secular bloggers and another publisher of Roy were assaulted in a separate incident, leaving one of them in a critical condition.

There was a common pattern in both the attacks, with the assailants locking the victims inside their offices before attacking them, reported the Press Trust of India. A group identifying itself as Ansaral-Islam – the Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent – claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Roy was hacked to death near a book fair in Dhaka on February 26, the first in a string of attacks targeting secular activists this year in Bangladesh, leaving five dead.