Members of the Tunisian special forces are deployed outside a house where gunmen had taken refuge in the town of Oued Ellil, a few kilometres from the capital, after exchanging fire with the armed group yesterday.
AFP/Tunis
Women and children were caught up yesterday in a police siege of a home near the Tunisian capital where security forces were fighting a gun battle with “terrorists” in which a policeman died.
The shootout came amid heightened security for fear of an upsurge in militant violence ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the first since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution.
At least two women and an unknown number of children were inside the house in Oued Ellil, a town on the outskirts of Tunis where a group was exchanging gunfire with security forces, the interior ministry said.
“We are not storming the house because there are women and children inside,” said ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui.
“There are at least two men, at least two women and children (in the house). We also have information on the presence of explosives.”
Authorities have demanded that the children and women be allowed to leave the house and the police, using loudhailers, also called out to the gunmen whom they described as “terrorists” to surrender.
The government said the gunmen are using the women and children as “human shields,” and Aroui said one of the women was the “wife of one of the terrorists”.
Police have been besieging the house for hours and gunfire exchanges could be heard intermittently late into the afternoon. One policeman was killed in the firefight and another one was wounded.
“Our agent died of a bullet wound in the eye sustained in clashes with a terrorist group,” a police official told AFP at the scene.
With security beefed up ahead of the election, Aroui told Mosaique FM radio police had also clashed earlier yesterday with two “terrorists” in Kebili, 500km south of Tunis.
The suspects were arrested after killing a private security guard in the gunfight, he said.
The operation in Oued Ellil was launched based on information extracted from the two suspects, said Aroui.
The suspects had been “preparing operations in the area,” he said, adding that two Kalashnikov assault rifles had been seized.
Elsewhere, two soldiers were lightly wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Sakiet Sidi Yussef near the Algerian border, defence ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati said.
And Tunisia announced a three-day closure from today of the border to people wanting to travel from politically unstable Libya for fear of possible terrorist attacks.
Sunday’s election is seen as crucial to restoring stability in the North African nation, the cradle of the Arab Spring revolutionary movements.
Since the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has seen a proliferation of Islamists suppressed under the former autocratic president and the emergence of militant groups.
The militants have been blamed for a wave of attacks, including last year’s assassination of two leftist politicians whose murders plunged the country into a protracted political crisis.
Jihadists have killed dozens of soldiers and police over the past three years, especially in remote mountain areas on the Algerian border.
The government has ordered the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers and police for election day.
Palestinians to launch diplomatic push for statehood
The Palestinians will launch a diplomatic push in November to gain international recognition for an independent state in spite of Israeli and US warnings, senior negotiator Saeb Erakat said yesterday.
Speaking to reporters in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Erakat dismissed any attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to oppose Palestinian ambitions for statehood.
“If he believes that he can sustain the status quo and (that) we’ll do that for him, forget him. This will not last beyond November... we will not take it anymore, business as usual no more,” said Erakat.
Since the collapse of US-led peace talks with Israel in April, the Palestinians have turned to the UN and international organisations to seek recognition for their state. In 2012, the Palestinians won the status of UN observer state.
With peace talks now bogged down, the Palestinians have warned they would go ahead with plans to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council demanding an end to Israeli occupation.
