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Tunisian security officials lose jobs in wake of shootings
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Tunisia has fired six police commanders following last week’s Bardo museum massacre, as details emerged of lax security prior to the attack.
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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.
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.
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Essid’s spokesman Mofdi Mssedi said that after visiting the site of the killings the prime minister found “security failures”.
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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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
