The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tunisia, a popular holiday destination for Ukrainians, said on Friday that it prevented a serious threat of an attack in the country’s tourist areas. The police arrested a female suicide bomber who returned from Syria and planned to commit a terrorist attack. It was not reported which resort was to become a “target”.
The 22-year-old Tunisian woman was arrested at the Tunis airport on January 10, the agency said. In 2020, she visited Turkey, and last year she went to Syria, where extremist groups taught her how to organize a terrorist attack using explosives. It was clarified that the authorities of the North African country also arrested her accomplice, who was supposed to hand over the belt with explosives to the suicide bomber. According to some reports, he participated in the planning of terrorist operations at the end of 2021 against civil servants of the country.
In recent years, Tunisian security forces have prevented most plots by militants and have become more effective in responding to attacks, Western diplomats say. So, in November, the police shot an extremist who tried to attack them with a knife and a cleaver in the capital of the same name.
However, the last major attacks on foreign tourists in Tunisia occurred in 2015, when militants killed dozens of people in two separate attacks on a museum in Bardo and a beach resort in Sousse, but soon after the country managed to regain its position as one of the best destinations in Africa and the Mediterranean.
We should add that the last known attack, during which tourists were in danger, took place just a few weeks ago in the capital of the UAE – Abu Dhabi.
