TUNIS, Tunisia – Tunisia’s president has declared a state of emergency throughout the country and a curfew in the capital after an attack on a bus carrying his presidential guard that killed 12 people.
Beji Caid Essebsi said in a televised address that the country is at “war against terrorism” and called for international co-operation against extremists who have staged several attacks around the world in recent weeks.
Essebsi said “I want to reassure the Tunisian people that we will vanquish terrorism.” He wasn’t in the bus when it was attacked Tuesday in the centre of the capital.
His office says he is cancelling a trip to Switzerland that had been scheduled for Wednesday.
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An explosion hit a bus carrying members of Tunisia’s presidential guard in the country’s capital Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than a dozen others in what the Interior Ministry called a “terrorist act.”
The blast on a tree-lined avenue in the heart of Tunis is a new blow to a country that has struggled against Islamic extremist violence. Radical gunmen staged two attacks earlier this year that killed 60 people, devastated the tourism industry and rattled this young democracy.
Police fanned out throughout central Tunis after Tuesday’s explosion, and ambulances rushed to the scene, evacuating wounded and dead.
Interior Ministry spokesman Walid Louguini told The Associated Press that at least 12 were killed and 16 wounded in what the government considers a “terrorist act.”
The attack came days after authorities visibly but inexplicably increased the security level in the capital and deployed security forces in unusually high numbers.
A few days before that, Tunisian authorities announced the dismantling of a cell that it said had planned attacks at police stations and hotels in the seaside city of Sousse, about 150 kilometres (95 miles) southeast of Tunis. Sousse was one of the targets of attacks earlier this year.
Tunisia’s tourism industry has been hit hard this year following extremist attacks. Shootings at a luxury beach hotel in Sousse last June killed 38 people, mostly tourists, while in March, an attack by Islamist extremists at Tunisia’s famed Bardo museum near the capital killed 22 people.
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