Policeman killed in pre-election firefight near Tunis

TUNIS, Tunisia – A Tunisian policeman was killed in a firefight near the capital Thursday, October 23, amid fears of jihadist violence in the run-up to the first parliamentary election since the country’s 2011 revolution.

“Our agent died of a bullet wound in the eye sustained in clashes with a terrorist group,” a police official told Agence France-Presse at the scene.

The interior ministry said police traded gunfire with armed “terrorists” who had taken refuge in a house in the town of Oued Ellil on the outskirts of the capital.

The police source said the family of a gunman holed up in the house was also inside.

Amid sporadic rounds of gunfire, a large deployment of police besieging the house used loudhailers to urge the suspects to surrender.

With security beefed up ahead of Tunisia’s parliamentary election on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Ali Aroui told Mosaique FM radio that police had also clashed earlier Thursday with two “terrorists” in Kebili, 500 km (300 miles) south of Tunis.

The suspects were arrested after killing a private security guard in the gunfight, he said.

They had been “preparing operations in the area,” Aroui said, adding that two Kalashnikov assault rifles were seized.

Elsewhere, two soldiers were lightly wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Sakiet Sidi Yussef near the Algerian border, defense ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati said.

The parliamentary election is seen as crucial to restoring stability in the North African nation, the cradle of the Arab Spring revolutionary movements.

Since the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has seen a proliferation of Islamists suppressed under the former autocratic president and the emergence of militant groups.

The jihadists have been blamed for a wave of attacks, including last year’s assassination of two leftist politicians whose murders plunged the country into a protracted political crisis.

Jihadist groups have over the past three years killed dozens of Tunisian soldiers and police, especially in violence in remote mountain areas on the border with Algeria. – Rappler.com