Tunisian police shot dead an Islamist militant in Tunis and a soldier was killed in a blast near the Algerian border yesterday, as the Government grappled with growing security and political crises in the country.
There has been a surge in Islamist militant attacks in the past two weeks in the North African country, and on Friday security forces launched heavy air and artillery strikes on militant hideouts in the Mount Chaambi area near the Algerian border.
At the same time the secular opposition, angered by the assassination of two of its leading members and emboldened by Egypt’s army-backed ousting of its elected Islamist president, is seeking to topple its own moderate Islamist-led government.
Tens of thousands of Tunisians came out in a show of force for the ruling Ennahda party on Saturday.
The opposition has pledged to rally more supporters in its own demonstration on Wednesday to mark the six months from Chokri Belaid’s assassination.
One soldier was killed and seven others were wounded by a landmine that hit their tank as they combed an area in Mount Chaambi where militants killed eight soldiers last week, in the deadliest attack on Tunisian forces in decades.
In the capital Tunis, Interior Ministry official Lotfi Hidouri said police had raided a house where militants were hiding weapons in the Kabaria district.
“The police killed a terrorist and arrested five others,” he said.
Witnesses said police also arrested several hardline Salafists suspected of ties to militant groups in the town of Sbitla, north of the capital.
One witness said dozens of Salafists then gathered at the police headquarters in Sbitla to protest against the arrests and that the police fired in the air to disperse them. Over the past week a roadside explosive device and a car bomb have targeted security forces in Tunis, the first such attacks to hit the capital. No one was hurt.
Once considered a model among fledgling “Arab Spring” democracies, Tunisia is facing its worst crisis since protesters toppled autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and set off a wave of uprisings.
The opposition has accused Ennahda of being linked to or tolerating Islamist militant attacks. The party denies that and has stepped up recent efforts to crack down. It denounced recent attacks as terrorism.