NEW DELHI (AP) — Police in Bangladesh say unidentified assailants have stabbed two men to death, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Mohammed Iqbal, police officer-in-charge in Dhaka's Kalabagan area, identified the activist as Xulhaz Mannan and said he previously worked as a protocol officer for a former U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh. He said the other victim of Monday's attack was a friend of Mannan's named Tanay Majumder.

Iqbal said Mannan was an editor of Bangladesh's first gay rights magazine, Roopbaan.

The killings occurred two days after unidentified men hacked to death a university professor in a northwestern city.

The attack was similar to recent killings of atheist bloggers by radical Islamists in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.