TUNIS: Tunisian forces killed nine “terrorists” and seized explosives west of the capital in an area previously spared from Islamist militancy but where two policemen were killed this week, officials said yesterday.
The birthplace of the Arab Spring has been locked in a political crisis for months, with the opposition accusing the ruling Islamist Ennahda party of failing to stem a rise in jihadist violence since the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
Tunisian forces killed the suspects in the Mount Taouyer area of Beja region, just 70km from the capital, defence ministry spokesman Taoufik Rahmouni was quoted as saying by the official TAP news agency.
The spokesman said troops had captured a member of the “terrorist” group during the military operation to hunt down a cell of some 20 suspected jihadists blamed for Thursday’s killing of the policemen.
Two tonnes of explosives and other ammunition were seized in a neighbouring village, he said.
Rahmouni said the operation launched Thursday was still underway on Saturday with the aid of reconnaissance flights, and that artillery strikes had been carried out in the region.
Since the 2011 uprising that sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia has seen a rise in attacks by jihadist groups formerly suppressed by Ben Ali.
Some 15 soldiers and police have been killed since December in the hunt for militants allegedly linked to Al Qaeda on the Mount Chaambi region along the border with Algeria, but Saturday’s operation was the first of its kind in Beja, which is much closer to the capital.
The defence ministry has said it lacks the resources to combat militant groups and has struggled to contain them.
On Friday, in a sign of rising frustration over the costly fight against jihadists, protesting security forces drove Prime Minister Ali Larayedh and President Moncef Marzouki away from a memorial service for the policemen killed in Beja.
Tunisia has been in a state of political paralysis since July, when prominent opposition lawmaker Mohamed Brahmi was shot dead by suspected jihadists, in circumstances similar to the murder of another opposition figure, Chokri Belaid, six months earlier.
The radical Salafist movement Ansar Al Sharia has been implicated in the killings, with the interior ministry saying its leader, Abou Iyadh, is holed up in Mount Chaambi. AFP
