DHAKA: Catholic priest has disappeared in Bangladesh, police said Wednesday, a day before Pope Francis starts a landmark visit to the Muslim-majority nation wracked by Islamist extremism.
Walter William Rosario, 40, is from the same village in northern Bangladesh where suspected Islamist extremists last year hacked a Catholic grocer to death as he opened his shop.
A major search has been launched for Rosario, who is also headmaster of a Catholic school in Natore district, after his family reported him missing, police said.
“He has been missing since late Monday. His mobile has been switched off,” local police chief Biplob Bijoy Talukder told AFP.
Gerves Rosario, the bishop of the nearby city of Rajshahi, said he believed the priest had been kidnapped and that Catholics in the region were deeply worried.
“He was organizing for around 300 Catholics to travel to Dhaka to see the Pope and attend his holy mass. But his disappearance has marred their joy. They don’t want to go to Dhaka anymore,” said the bishop.
The family received a phone call from someone using Rosario’s number to demand a ransom, but Talukder said police believed this was a hoax.
They have not ruled out the possibility he was abducted by Islamist extremists, who have carried out attacks on religious minorities in the region in the past four years.
Pope Francis arrives in Bangladesh Thursday on the first visit to the country by the head of the Catholic Church in 31 years.
The trip will be dominated by the plight of more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled ethnic unrest in Myanmar and taken refuge in Bangladesh.
Christians, who make up less than 0.5 percent of Bangladesh’s 160 million people, have in recent years faced attacks by Islamist radicals.
Since 2015 at least three Christians, including two converts from Islam, have been hacked to death in attacks blamed on the militant Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).
In July last year militants from the same group stormed a Dhaka cafe and massacred 22 hostages including 18 foreigners in an attack claimed by the Daesh group.
However, the government has denied the international militants’ involvement and security forces have killed more than 70 alleged militants since the cafe attack.
Catholic priest disappears in Bangladesh before Pope visit
Catholic priest disappears in Bangladesh before Pope visit
Afghan Taliban says Pakistan bombs Kabul in fresh escalation
KABUL: The Afghan government said on Friday that Pakistan had carried out fresh strikes on Kabul and several other provinces.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a post on X that Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika, and some other areas, were targeted.
Pakistan has killed at least 641 Afghan Taliban operatives and injured more than 855 in the ongoing conflict between the two sides since last month, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Wednesday.
Islamabad has said its airstrikes, which have at times directly targeted the Afghan Taliban government, are aimed at ending Kabul’s support for militants carrying out attacks on Pakistan. The Taliban has denied aiding militant groups.
Fresh clashes between the two neighbors began on Feb. 26 after Afghanistan’s border forces launched attacks against Pakistani military installations. Kabul said the attack was in retaliation for Islamabad’s airstrikes earlier in February. Both forces have since then engaged in the worst fighting between them in decades.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have remained strained since the Afghan Taliban seized power in August 2021. Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks across the country in recent months that it blames on militants it alleges are based in Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegations and insists that its soil is not used by militant groups for attacks against other countries.
While Afghanistan has voiced the desire for dialogue, Pakistan has repeatedly ruled out talks, saying it will continue targeting militant hideouts through “Operation Ghazab lil Haq” until Kabul desists from supporting militants.
