Bangladeshi police on Monday detained 166 suspects for the torching of Buddhist temples by angry Muslims over a Facebook posting that insulted Muslims, a government minister said.
Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir blamed a right-wing political party for inciting the weekend attacks.
“Police were instructed to curb any attempts of vitiating religious harmony with an iron fist,” he said.
Several thousand Muslims torched temples in Cox’s Bazar district, 350 kilometers south-east of Dhaka, after learning about the posting by a presumed Buddhist that showed a man trampling a copy of the Muslim holy book.
The mob burned temples and vandalized more than 100 homes of Buddhists, who account for 0.7 per cent of the Muslim-majority country’s 160 million population.
Authorities deployed additional forces at all temples of minority Buddhist and Hindu communities after the vandalism spread in some parts of the country.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed said in New York Sunday that the government would bring the perpetrators to justice.
