‘Terrorist attack’ kills 6 Tunisia security forces

TUNIS: Six members of Tunisia’s security forces were killed Sunday in a “terrorist attack” near the border with Algeria, the interior ministry said, the country’s deadliest such incident in over two years.

A national guard border patrol in the Ain Sultan area of the Jenduba border province “was hit in a landmine ambush that killed six agents” at 11:45 am (1045 GMT), the ministry said in a statement.

Ministry spokesman General Sufyan al-Zaq said the blast was a “terrorist attack” and that assailants had “opened fire on security forces” after the mine exploded. “Combing operations” were underway, said Zaq, who had earlier told AFP that eight guards were killed in the attack.

No group has claimed the attack, which took place in a mountainous border area where the Al-Qaeda-linked Okba Ibn Nafaa Battalion and the Tunisian branch of the Islamic State group, Jund al-Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate), are active.

Sunday’s assault marks the first major attack in Tunisia since a March 2016 attack on security installations in the town of Ben Guerdane on the Libyan border. That attack killed 13 security forces and seven civilians.