adminThe last days terrorist attack form Tunisia revived painful memories about the similar situation from 2015, and Sousse has become once again the scene of violent actions.
The incident comes two days after a new government was sworn in and resulted in a knife attack on two National Guard officers. One of the police officers died and the other was wounded and is hospitalized.
After a chase with the police forces, through the tourist areas of El Kantaoui, three assailants were shot dead without knowing if they were associated with any particular extremis group, but on Monday, ISIL (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.
Since Sunday, 43 people have been questioned and seven arrested, including the wife of one of the assailants, who described her husband as a “martyr”, during the interrogation, two brothers of one of the attackers and a person suspected of being the recruiter of them.
The authorities said that two of the terrorists were twin brothers and the other one was part of the marginalized northwestern region of Silian. The Tunisian Prime Minister urged the population not to fear the assailants and promised them to do whatever he will be able to in order to eradicate terrorist’s actions.
Since its uprising form 2011, Tunisia has been a target for the jihadist attacks that have killed many people, including security forces, civilians and foreign tourists. Beside this one, in 2020 it was another attack on March 6, a suicide bomb which was targeting a police patrol near the US Embassy in Tunis and resulted with the death of one police officer and the injured of five people.
During 2019 there were two attacks, the same number as in 2018, without making a large number of victims, compared with the well-known terrorist attacks from 2015, when a total of 59 foreign tourist were killed.
Despite some improvements in security segment, its border with Libya is a major threat for the Tunisians, because of the political and security instability of the Libyans and the fact that there is an operational area for the Islamic State. Because of that, Tunisian security forces have repeatedly been targeted in terrorist-related incidents, mainly in border areas including in the Chaambi Mountains.
While the situation has significantly improved since the bloody year of 2015, Tunisia has maintained a state of emergency in matter of terrorist activity.