A Tunisian soldier opened fire at a military base in the capital yesterday, killing seven colleagues and wounding 10 others before being shot dead himself, according to the army which said the shooter had “family problems”.
What exactly triggered the shooting at the Bouchoucha base in Tunis was not immediately clear, but the incident alarmed residents in the capital city still on edge after an attack in March by Islamist gunmen on the Bardo national museum.
When gunfire erupted yesterday morning, police evacuated a nearby school, as locals feared they may be under attack.
“A soldier opened fire and killed seven others, he was then killed. Ten others are injured,” army spokesman Bel Hassen Ouslati told reporters.
“According to what we know, he had some family problems, this is nothing to do with a terrorist attack.”
Two military helicopters hovered over the scene as police searched cars on the road to the base. An army colonel was among the victims, a security source said.
Gun fight alarms Tunis, scene of museum killings in March
Since its 2011 uprising against autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has been spared the worst chaos that neighbouring countries experienced after the “Arab Spring”. But some Islamist hardliners have turned to violence.
Tunisian forces have been carrying out operations against Islamist fighters since March when two gunmen opened fire on tourists at the Bardo museum, killing 21 foreigners in the worst attack in Tunisia in more than a decade.
A Tunisian government official said on Friday that a Moroccan man supplied arms for the March attack on the Bardo Museum and then boarded a migrant boat for Italy, where he is now held.
Italian prosecutors arrested 22-year-old Abdelmajid Touil on an international warrant last week.
The Italian navy rescued Touil from the migrant boat in February, news that has fuelled fears that Islamic militants could be among the thousands crossing the Mediterranean by boat to Europe. He was fingerprinted when he landed on February 17.
“We are sure that he was involved in the attack on Bardo,” a Tunisian official said. “All of the group arrested in the case confirmed that he was involved in the attack, and he got arms for the attackers from Libya.”
Tunisian authorities say the attack was carried out by a cell of about two dozen militants with overlapping allegiances to a number of hardline Islamist groups.
During a two-hour meeting with a Milan judge in prison on Friday, Touil said he had been erroneously arrested.
“He said he was innocent and he defined his arrest as an error,” Silvia Fiorentino, Touil’s lawyer, told reporters after her client met appeals court judge Pietro Caccialanza for a formal reading of the charges.
Tunisia has asked for Touil’s extradition to face trial, Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui told Reuters.
During his hearing, Touil said he opposed being extradited. Since four Italians were among those murdered in the museum attack, Touil would first need to stand trial in Rome before being extradited, judicial sources added.
Also, according to Italian law, extradition would not be granted if Tunisia seeks the death penalty, they said.