The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior announced Wednesday that the national guard dismantled a terrorist cell composed of four young men in Al Mnihla in north eastern of Tunisia. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the six suspects are aged between 21 and 23 years.
The national guard raided the houses of suspects and found takfiri books and CDs containing extremist ideas, as well as a Daech flag, said the ministry in a statement. One of them is a wife of an arrested terrorist. Those women adopting Daech ideology were in relationships with jihadists inside and outside the country, added the statement.
Two "dangerous and wanted terrorists" were killed during the raid Wednesday in Mnihla near the capital, while 16 suspected jihadists were arrested, the interior ministry said Thursday. Another 21 other suspects were arrested in raids that followed, the Interior Ministry added.
It added, “All those arrested were members of "terrorist cells operating across (Tunisian) territory. They have been monitored and followed by the national guard for more than four months.” In a deadly confrontation that erupted during one of the raids in the Tataouine governorate, four policemen were killed when a militant detonated his explosives belt after a firefight erupted. The men arrested in the raids had all been trained in the use of firearms, the ministry said.
Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has suffered from a wave of jihadist violence since its 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. IS claimed brazen attacks last year on the Bardo Museum in Tunis and the beach resort near Sousse that killed a total of 60 people, all but one of them foreign tourists.
A November suicide bombing in the capital, also claimed by IS, killed 12 presidential guards and prompted the authorities to declare a state of emergency. Ben Guerdane, one of the North African nation's poorest towns, was the target of a jihadist assault that killed seven civilians and 13 security personnel in March as well as 55 extremists.