Tunisia’s interior ministry, a popular holiday destination for Ukrainians, said on Friday it had prevented a serious threat of attack in the country’s tourist areas. Police arrested a female suicide bomber who had returned from Syria and planned to carry out a terrorist attack. It was not reported which resort was to be the “target”.
The 22-year-old Tunisian was arrested at the Tunisian airport on January 10, the agency said. In 2020, she visited Turkey, and last year she went to Syria, where extremist groups trained her to organize an explosive attack. It was clarified that the authorities of the North African country also arrested her accomplice, who was to hand over a belt with explosives to the suicide bomber. According to some reports, he was involved in planning terrorist operations in late 2021 against the country’s civil servants.
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In recent years, Tunisian security forces have prevented most militant conspiracies and become more effective in responding to attacks, Western diplomats say. So, in November, police shot dead an extremist who tried to attack them with a knife and scythe in the capital of the same name.
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 Bordeaux 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.
It should be added that the last known attack, during which tourists were endangered, took place just a few weeks ago in the UAE capital – Abu Dhabi. Read the details at the link “Abu Dhabi Airport had to close due to a new missile attack.”