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Gunmen attack museum in Tunisia, kill at least 17 foreign tourists Gunmen attack museum in Tunisia, kill at least 17 foreign tourists
(about 1 hour later)
CAIRO — Gunmen wearing military uniforms opened fire on visitors at Tunisia’s most prominent museum Wednesday in an ambush-style siege that left at least 19 people dead, including 17 foreigners, and raised worries of expanding attacks by militants linked to the Islamic State, officials said. CAIRO — Gunmen opened fire on visitors at a renowned museum in the heart of the Tunisian capital Wednesday, killing at least 19 people, including 17 foreigners, in an assault that threatened to upset the country’s fragile political stability.
A raid by security forces freed hostages and killed two suspected assailants. But Tunisia’s prime minister said some attackers may have escaped after the deadliest terrorist strike in more than a decade in the tiny North African nation — whose economy depends heavily on tourism. It was the worst terrorist attack in the North African nation in more than a decade, and it raised fears that militants linked to the Islamic State were expanding their operations.
“All Tunisians should be united after this attack, which was aimed at destroying the Tunisian economy,” said the prime minister, Habib Essid, in a nationally broadcast address. The attackers, clad in military uniforms, stormed the Bardo National Museum in Tunis on Wednesday afternoon, seizing and gunning down foreign tourists before security forces raided the building to end the siege. Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said that in addition to the foreigners, a local museum worker and a security official were killed. Three other gunmen may have escaped, Essid said.
Although authorities first placed the overall death toll at 21 — including the two attackers — a later report by state television said a total of 22 were killed. It did not immediately provide details.
[Read: Why Tunisia, Arab Spring’s sole success story, suffers from Islamist violence][Read: Why Tunisia, Arab Spring’s sole success story, suffers from Islamist violence]
A full breakdown of the victims’ nationalities was not immediately available, but Essid said citizens from Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bloodshed. Tunisia, a nation of about 10 million people, has grappled with rising extremism and Islamist militancy since a popular uprising there four years ago. Thousands of Tunisians have flocked to the ranks of jihadist groups fighting in Syria, including the Islamic State. Tunisian security forces have also fought increasing battles with jihadists at home.
Essid also said as many as three suspected attackers could have slipped away and may be on the loose, but he gave no other details. Despite this, the country has been hailed as a model of democratic transition amid the bloody collapse of other states in the region. But the attack Wednesday — on a national landmark that showcases Tunisia’s rich heritage — could heighten tensions in a country that has become deeply divided between pro- and anti-Islamist political factions.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on the Bardo National Museum in the capital, Tunis. Many Tunisians perceive the country’s political Islamists, who held power from 2011 to 2013, as having turned a blind eye to the growing threat of terrorism. The last major attack on a civilian target was in 2002, when al-Qaeda militants killed more than 20 people in a car bomb explosion outside a synagogue in the Tunisian city of Djerba.
But it followed mounting bloodshed and clashes in neighboring Libya linked to the expanding presence of militants pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, including a recent battle that killed a most-wanted Tunisian-born extremist. “This attack today is meant to threaten authorities, to frighten tourists and to negatively affect the economy,” said Lofti Azzouz, Tunisia country director for Amnesty International, a London-based rights group.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, openly speculated that Islamic State-linked militants were to blame. She pledged to “mobilize all the tools” of the E.U. to help Tunisia fight terrorism. Tourism accounted for 15 percent of Tunisia’s gross domestic product in 2013, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, a global industry body.
The attack began as gunmen opened fire on tourists getting off buses outside the museum, which is located near the country’s parliament building, officials said. The attackers then fled into the museum’s marble and stone galleries, taking hostages or forcing visitors to hide in fear. “It’s also aimed at the country’s security and stability during the transition period,” Azzouz said. “And it could have political repercussions — like the curtailing of human rights, or even less government transparency if there’s fear of further attacks.”
“There is great chaos, shots and shouts,” a French tourist, identified only as Geraldine, said in a telephone call from inside the museum, according to audio posted on the Web site of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The attack raised concerns Wednesday that anti-Islamist parties would pressure the largely secular government to stage a wider crackdown on Islamists of all stripes. Lawmakers are currently drafting an anti-terrorism bill to give security forces additional tools to fight militants.
Images posted on social media showed people cowering against walls and amid museum displays. Outside, security forces fanned out before mounting the assault. Dozens of people soon poured out of the museum’s grand doors.
The Bardo museum, the site of a 19th century palace and dating back centuries further, is among the major tourist sites in Tunisia and contains extensive collections of antiquities including Roman mosaics and pieces from Islam’s spread across North Africa.
[Read: Tunisia’s new president describes his reformist agenda]
Tunisia has grappled with rising extremism and Islamist militancy since a popular uprising ousted strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
The country of roughly 10 million has been lauded as a model of democratic transition following the Arab Spring, which began with protests in Tunisia when a vegetable seller set himself on fire in December 2010 after complaining of harassment by local officials.
Tunisia has largely escaped the bloody civil wars and rampant political instability that have plagued other countries in the region.
[Read: Tunisia sends most foreign fighters to Islamic State in Syria][Read: Tunisia sends most foreign fighters to Islamic State in Syria]
But it has also contributed a staggering number of fighters to the ranks of jihadist groups in Syria, including the Islamic State. Successive Tunisian governments have struggled to curb the flow of young Tunisians to battlefields elsewhere in the Middle East. “We must pay attention to what is written” in that law, Azzouz said. “There is worry the government will use the attack to justify some draconian measures.”
At the same time, Tunisian security forces have waged skirmishes against militants at home. Those jihadists are largely entrenched near the country’s border with Algeria but have engaged in firefights with Tunisian police in and near the capital recently. Tunisian Islamists and the secular forces opposed to their rule have worked together — often reluctantly — to diffuse the country’s political crises in the years since the revolt.
“It is not by chance that today’s terrorism affects a country that represents hope for the Arab world,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, whose country was hit in January by a string of Islamist attacks, including a deadly assault on the satirical Paris-based newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Last fall, Tunisians elected a secular-minded president and parliament dominated by liberal forces after souring on years of Islamist-led rule. In 2011, voters empowered Tunisia’s Ennahda party — a movement similar to Egypt’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood — to draft the country’s new constitution. But Ennahda soon came under fire for what many Tunisians saw as a failure to crack down on a rising Islamist threat.
“The hope for peace, the hope for stability, the hope for democracy — this hope must live,” Fabius added. Under the Islamists, hard-line Salafists — once jailed by Tunisia’s authoritarian president before he was ousted in 2011 — staged protests and attacked bars and art galleries with little rebuke from the government. Then suspected Islamists shot and killed two secular activists in 2013, threatening to plunge Tunisia into further turmoil.
On Tuesday, the Tunisian government said a top commander for the Islamic State — and one of Tunisia’s most-wanted militants — was killed while fighting in neighboring Libya. But Ennahda later stepped down, and a technocratic government took over. Tunisia’s current coalition government also includes several Ennahda ministers. Still, many leftist figures openly opposed collaboration with the movement’s leaders.
The Islamic State posted a statement on a militant Web site saying Ahmed al-Rouissi was killed in clashes around Sirte, a stronghold for a group pledging loyalty to the Islamic State. “Ennahda is responsible for the current deterioration of the situation, because they were careless with the extremists” while they were in power, Azzouz said.
The 48-year-old Rouissi was considered the mastermind in a string of attacks in Tunisia linked to the a faction known as Ansar al-Shariah, including the 2013 killings of two Western-oriented political leaders, Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi. Security officials are particularly concerned by the collapse of neighboring Libya, where various armed groups are vying for influence and jihadist militants have entrenched themselves in major cities.
Last month, at least 35 people were killed in triple suicide car bombings in eastern Libya. The attacks were carried out in apparent retaliation for Egyptian airstrikes following the mass beheadings of 21 Christians — all but one of them Egyptian — by Islamic State militants in Libya. In January, Libyan militants loyal to the Islamic State beheaded 21 Christians — 20 of them Egyptian Copts — along the country’s coast. They later seized the Libyan city of Sirte.
Wednesday’s assault was the worst bloodshed targeting foreigners in Tunisia since an al-Qaeda suicide bombing in 2002 killed 21 people at a historic synagogue on the tourist island of Djerba. The death toll included 14 Germans, five Tunisians and two French citizens. Officials are worried about the number of Tunisian militants who may have joined the jihadists in Libya — with the goal of returning home to fight the Tunis government.
In September 2012, attackers damaged the U.S. Embassy in Tunis and an neighboring American school. Four of the assailants were killed. Ajmi Lourimi, a member of Ennahda’s general secretariat, said he believed the attack would unite Tunisians in the face of terrorism.
Murphy reported from Washington. “There is a consensus here that this [attack] is alien to our culture, to our way of life. We want to unify against this danger,” Lourimi said. He said he did not expect a wider government campaign against Islamists.
“We have nothing to fear,” he said of himself and fellow Ennahda members. “We believe the Interior Ministry should be trained and equipped to fight and counter this militancy.”
Heba Habib contributed to this report.
Read more:Read more:
How Egypt’s political unrest spills over to TunisiaHow Egypt’s political unrest spills over to Tunisia
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