A masked gang wielding machetes hacked a secular blogger to death Tuesday in northeastern Bangladesh in the third such deadly attack since the start of the year, police said.

"Attackers wearing masks hacked Ananta Bijoy Das with machetes in Sylhet city at around 8.30am this morning. We have learnt that he was a writer," deputy commissioner of Sylhet police Faisal Mahmud told AFP.

Imran Sarker, head of a Bangladeshi bloggers' association, told AFP that Das was "an atheist and wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona," a website which used to be moderated by Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US citizen who was himself hacked to death in the capital Dhaka in February.