DHAKA, Bangladesh — Attackers wielding machetes killed a Hindu priest in Bangladesh on Friday morning, the fourth Hindu to be targeted during the past month in more than three years of similar killings by Islamist militants in this Muslim-majority country.

Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the death in a report by the group’s Amaq News Agency, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online. Responsibility for many other attacks had been claimed either by the Islamic State or a branch of Al Qaeda, but the Bangladeshi government has persistently denied the presence of such extremist networks in the country.

The police suspected the involvement of the student wing of the country’s largest religious political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, because a man arrested in connection with a similar killing of a Hindu priest in the same district three weeks ago claimed membership in that group, said Gopinath Kanjilal, an assistant superintendent of the police for the Jhenaidah district in southwestern Bangladesh, where the attack occurred.

A Jamaat leader in the region, Shah Alam, interviewed by phone, denied that the group’s student wing was responsible for the killings.