Ennahda condemns Tunisia terror attack

The Ennahda Party, as a partner in Tunisia’s Unity Government, has condemned the terrorist attack in Habib Bourguiba Avenue yesterday which wounded 15 people including ten police officers.

“Following this criminal attempt, and pending the Ministry of Interior’s disclosure of the circumstances, the Ennahda Party condemns this cowardly terrorist attack against our national security forces which targeted the Habib Bourguiba Avenue and what it represents for the Tunisian people, from symbolising the values of freedom and democracy to being a public space for leisure and entertainment,” a statement signed by party head Rachid Al-Ghannouchi read.

Believed to have been committed by a 30-year-old woman named only as Mouna, who had no known militant background, the attack was the first in three years.

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“The woman left her city three days ago and told her family that she was going to the capital to look for work,” said Walid Hkima an official in the interior ministry. She had a university degree in English and was from the coastal governorate of Mahdia, he said.

Hundreds of police cordoned off an area near the landmark Municipal Theatre and the French embassy, while ambulances evacuated the wounded.

The statement called on Tunisian “to uphold and strengthen national unity and to stand with the security and military institutions to continue their efforts in the name of building a peaceful and democratic Tunisia.”

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Security has improved since authorities imposed a state of emergency in November 2015 after attacks on tourist targets that scared off holidaymakers and investors, worsening an economic crisis caused by a chronic deficit.

That year, a series of attacks claimed the lives of dozens. In June 2015, 38 people were killed in a shooting rampage at the country’s coastal resort of Sousse, this a occurred one month after another attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis left 22 people dead.

“We thought we had eliminated terrorism but we hope that terrorism will not bring us down, especially with the bad political climate in Tunisia now,” President Beji Caid Essebsi said yesterday.