Gunmen in the Tunisian capital Tunis killed at least 19 people, including 17 foreign tourists, in an attack on a museum next to the parliament building yesterday.
Two French nationals, five Japanese tourists as well as visitors from Italy, Poland and Spain were among the dead.
Two assailants dressed in military uniform opened fire as a group of tourists got off a bus at the Bardo museum, said Habib Essid, Tunisia’s prime minister. The gunmen chased fleeing tourists into the museum and took hostages before being shot dead by the police. The security forces were searching for up to three accomplices.
Two Tunisians, including a police officer, were also killed. The interior ministry said all hostages were freed. The dead came from Italy, Poland, Germany and Spain, Mr Essid said.
Emerging democracy
The attack on the parliament targeting both the symbol of Tunisia’s emerging democracy and its vital tourism industry is a big blow to the country seen as the only success to emerge from the Arab uprising of 2011.
“It is not by chance that today’s terrorism affects a country that represents hope for the Arab world,” said Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister.
Beji Caid Sebsi, the Tunisian president, described the attack as “a big disaster”. “We should mobilise the Tunisian people to get rid of [terrorists] totally.”
This was the first deadly terrorist act against tourists in Tunisia since 2002 when 21 German and French holidaymakers were killed on the island of Djerba.
Mr Essid described the museum shootings as a targeted attack on “a sensitive sector of the Tunisian economy, which is going through a crisis”.
The Italian foreign ministry said about 100 of its nationals were rescued. One group is thought to have come from an Italian cruise ship, the Costa Fascinosa, which docked in Tunis yesterday morning.
Moncef Cheikh Rouhou, an economist and a leader of the Democratic Alliance party, said the attack was a setback to hopes tourism would recover after the country had completed its democratic transition and put in place an elected parliament and president.
“We were hoping that tourism would increase to over 20 per cent of gross domestic product,” he said. “ Yes, there will be an impact, but tourism was already depressed so maybe it won’t be much in percentage terms.”
The attackers entered from a garden overlooked by the museum and parliament, local media reported.
Their identity is unknown, but the country’s security services have been fighting Islamist militant groups near the border with Algeria.
Armed extremist groups have gathered strength in Tunisia since the overthrow of long-time dictator Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. Militants from the Ansar al Sharia group assassinated two secular politicians in 2012. By some estimates, 3,000 Tunisians have travelled east to join the Islamic State.
Tunisia has been a beacon for the region, the only example of democracy taking root after a repressive regime was removed in a popular uprising.
But the fact that moderate Islamists from the Nahda party are represented in the government and make up the second-biggest force in parliament has done little to tame an extremist fringe determined to impose an Islamic state by force. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015