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Tunisian security officials lose jobs in wake of shootings Tunisian security officials lose jobs in wake of shootings
(about 5 hours later)
Tunisia’s prime minister has fired six police commanders, including the head of tourist security, after a militant attack on the national museum last week in which 23 people, including 20 tourists and two gunmen, were killed. Tunisia has fired six police commanders following last week’s Bardo museum massacre, as details emerged of lax security prior to the attack.
Habib Essid’s spokesman, Mofdi Mssedi, said the six also included an intelligence brigade chief, the Tunis district police chief, the traffic police commander, a Bardo security chief and a commander for the capital’s Sidi Bachir district. Two gunmen killed 21 people, 19 of them tourists, in the attack at the museum in central Tunis, the worst violence the country has witnessed since the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali four years ago.
“Habib Essid visited the Bardo museum yesterday ... and took note of several security failures” Mssedi said. The Tunisian prime Minister, Habib Essid, announced on Monday that the museum’s police commander and the Tunis police chief were among those sacked, together with other senior officers.
Essid’s spokesman Mofdi Mssedi said that after visiting the site of the killings the prime minister found “security failures”.
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A British woman was among 20 foreign tourists –including Japanese, Polish, Italian and Spanish visitors – killed by gunmen last Wednesday as they got off buses at the Bardo museum, inside the parliamentary compound, which is normally heavily guarded. Those failures included the apparent absence from posts of all four police officers deployed to guard the museum. An arrest warrant was issued on Monday for one of them.
It was the worst attack in more than a decade in Tunisia, testing the north African country’s young democracy four years after the revolt that overthrew autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. The deputy speaker of parliament, Abdelfattah Mourou, said the officer in question was not at work, while two of the remaining three were drinking coffee and the fourth was at lunch.
Two gunmen were shot dead at the scene and authorities have arrested more than 20 people, 10 of whom officials believe were directly involved in the attack. Some had recently returned from fighting for Islamist militant groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Ali Eddine Hamadi, a museum curator praised for saving the lives of 19 French and Tunisian tourists during the attack, in which both gunmen died, told the Guardian there were no police on duty on the doors of the museum when the attackers burst in, after opening fire on tour buses parked outside.
As security forces gear up for the arrival of thousands of foreigners for a three-day social conference in Tunis this week, police continue searching for a third gunman they say participated in the attack.
A final breakdown of the 19 foreign deaths has been issued by the authorities, who say four Italians were killed along with three each from France, Japan and Poland, two Colombians and citizens from Belgium, Great Britain, Spain and Russia. Forty-three people, foreigners and Tunisian, were wounded.
Tunisia’s president, Beji Caid Essebsi, promised a review of security, telling a French magazine. “The police and intelligence services had not been thorough enough in protecting the museum.”
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Islamic State militants fighting in Iraq and Syria claimed their supporters carried out the attack although a local al-Qaida affiliated group known as Okba Ibn Nafaa has also published details and comments on the assault. The government is anxious to reassure foreign governments and its own public that security will be improved, with the lapses reviving memories of the storming and ransacking of the American embassy in Tunis by Islamist militants two years ago.
Tunisia has been largely spared the violent aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, with secular and Islamist parties overcoming their divisions to compromise, approve a new constitution and hold free elections. The finance minister, Slim Chaker, estimated the attack could cost the tourist industry, one of Tunisia’s major hard currency earners, £240m in lost earnings if there are mass cancellations.
Hardline Islamist groups also emerged after the revolt against Ben Ali swept away his one-party rule. Since then, security forces have been caught up in a growing battle with extremists, some of whom are returning from training and fighting abroad. Islamic State militants fighting in Iraq and Syria claimed their supporters carried out last week’s attack although a local al-Qaida affiliated group known as Okba Ibn Nafaa has also published details and comments on the assault.
Authorities say the two gunmen killed in the Bardo attack had trained in jihadi camps in Libya. More than 3,000 Tunisians left to fight in Syria and Iraq, and hundreds have returned.