IN BANGLADESH, A SECOND FOREIGNER IS VIOLENTLY KILLED

[The gunmen, who were on foot and had covered their faces, fled the scene of Mr. Hoshi’s killing with a third man who was waiting on a motorcycle, said Rezaul Karim, an officer in charge in the Rangpur District, about 200 miles north of Dhaka. Mr. Hoshi died on the way to the hospital.]

By Julfikar Ali Manik and Ellen Barry

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A Japanese man was killed by two unidentified gunmen in northern Bangladesh on Saturday morning, less than a week after the killing of an Italian aid worker prompted fears that foreign nationals would become the target of extremist violence. The police said the man, Kunio Hoshi, 66, was shot three times while riding a rickshaw to a plot of land where he had been cultivating grass.

A suspected Islamic State account issued a statement online claiming responsibility for Mr. Hoshi’s killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors radical Islamic websites. The statement said a “security detachment” had killed Mr. Hoshi “after precisely tracking him.”

“The series of security operations against the citizens of the crusader coalition states will remain ongoing,” the statement said, according to SITE.

The Islamic State, using the same account, also claimed responsibility for the killing of Cesare Tavella, 50, in Dhaka on Monday.

The gunmen, who were on foot and had covered their faces, fled the scene of Mr. Hoshi’s killing with a third man who was waiting on a motorcycle, said Rezaul Karim, an officer in charge in the Rangpur District, about 200 miles north of Dhaka. Mr. Hoshi died on the way to the hospital.

Mr. Karim said it was too early to speculate on a motive for the killing. He said the authorities had detained three people for questioning, but the three men who fled on the motorcycle were still at large.

After learning of the crime, police officials in Dhaka held a two-hour meeting on Saturday to discuss measures to protect foreign nationals in Bangladesh and were ordered to increase visible policing across the country, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak.

In recent months there has been a heightened wariness of extremist violence in Bangladesh. The country has porous land, air and maritime borders that could make it a transit point for terrorists, but most people practice a moderate form of Islam, and the governing party, the Awami League, is adamantly secular.

However, a grim pattern of targeted assassinations has taken shape this year. Four activists who had published commentaries against fundamentalist Islam on social media have been murdered in identical, gory fashion, surrounded by young men with cleavers. The leader of Al Qaeda’s branch on the Indian subcontinent claimed responsibility for several of the killings.

Foreign governments have recently expressed new concerns that their citizens might be singled out by militants.

Last Monday, British authorities warned their officials to “limit attendance at events where Westerners may gather.”

Hours later, unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle killed the Italian aid worker, Mr. Tavella, while he was on an evening jog in the city’s diplomatic quarter. Mr. Tavella was a project manager for a nongovernmental organization that works to alleviate poverty in South Asia.

The Islamic State online account said “soldiers of the caliphate in Bangladesh” had followed “the crusader foreigner” along the street and killed Mr. Tavella with silenced weapons, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

On Thursday, after Australia’s cricket team postponed a planned trip to Bangladesh, Australian Foreign Ministry officials said they had intelligence suggesting a threat to the country’s interests. And the United States has prohibited its government personnel from attending “large gatherings” or traveling “on foot, motorcycle, bicycle, rickshaw or other uncovered means on all public thoroughfares and sidewalks” without permission.

Japan’s embassy in Dhaka has warned its citizens about Saturday’s killing and advised them to “exercise a greater level of vigilance for the interest of their own security,” according to Takeshi Matsunaga, the deputy chief of mission.

The U.S. ambassador, Marcia S. Bernicat, released a statement on Saturday urging the Bangladeshi government to “investigate every aspect of this crime and bring the perpetrators to justice as soon as possible.”

Police officials in Dhaka have made no arrests in Mr. Tavella’s killing.

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Ellen Barry from New Delhi.

@ The New York Times