Tunisia President rushed to hospital ‘in critical condition’ 

Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi has been rushed to hospital in a critical condition.

The 92-year-old was rushed to a military hospital in the Tunisian capital Tunis earlier this afternoon after falling “seriously ill”. Though some media outlets reported that the president had died, Essebsi’s aide Firas Guefrech warned in a tweet not to be “misled by rumours”.

Tunisia’s Prime Minister, Youssef Chahed, added in a Facebook post that Essebsi is currently “receiving all the necessary attention he needs” in hospital.

This came just hours after Tunis was hit by a twin suicide attack, leaving scores wounded and at least one dead. The attack – responsibility for which has not yet been claimed by any individual or group – appeared to have targeted Tunisian security forces, hitting a police patrol and officers stationed outside the Tunisian government’s anti-terrorism brigade headquarters in the city’s Al-Qarjani district.

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The president was previously hospitalised on Friday over health concerns, but was discharged the next day. He recently announced that he would not run in Tunisia’s upcoming elections in November, saying someone younger should lead the country.

Essebsi became Tunisia’s first democratically elected president in 2014, having founded the Nidaa Tounes party in 2012 in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution, which has since been seen as the spark for the Arab Spring.

He has boasted a long political career, having been appointed interior minister by Tunisia’s first post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba, in 1965.

It is understood that if anything were to happen to the president, the speaker of Tunisia’s parliament, Mohamed Ennaceur, will take over his duties until elections are held.

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