Three Terrorists killed in Tunisian Resort Attack

Tunisian forces have shot dead three assailants who killed one officer and badly injured another in the coastal resort town of Sousse.

TUNISIAN forces shot dead three armed assailants who rammed their vehicle at high speed into security officers and then attacked them with knives. One officer was killed and another injured in the attack at the coastal resort town of Sousse.

Sousse was the site of Tunisia’s deadliest attack in 2015 when a gunman killed 38 people, most of them British tourists. National Guard spokesman, Houcem Eddine Jebabli, said a patrol of two National Guard officers was targeted in the knife attack on Sunday in Sousse, 140km (87 miles) south of the capital Tunis.

“One died as a martyr and the other was wounded and is hospitalised,” he said, adding “this was a terrorist attack.” The attackers first rammed the gendarmes with a vehicle at about 6.40am (05.40 GMT). After the knife attack, security forces pursued the assailants who took the officers’ guns and vehicle through the Akouda district of the city’s tourist area of El-Kantaoui.

“In a firefight, three terrorists were killed,” he said, adding security forces “managed to recover” the car and two pistols the assailants had stolen. The North African nation’s prime minister, Hicham Mechichi, appeared to suggest the assailants’ planning of the attack might have been inconceived. Speaking at the site of the attack, he announced the arrest of a fourth suspect who had been on board the vehicle that rammed the National Guard officers.

“These terrorist groups wanted to signal their presence,” he said. “But they got the wrong address this time. The clearest proof of that is that the authors of this attack were eliminated in a few minutes.”

The attack took place in the coastal resort town of Sousse, where a gunman killed 38 people in 2015. It was only in June this year when Tunisia’s tourism bosses announced the country was all geared up to greet UK and Spanish holidaymakers for the summer season.