Tunisia: security stepped up to ward off eminent attacks

The Tunisian Interior ministry on Sunday warned that eminent terrorist attacks were looming on capital city Tunis and ordered stepping up security measures.

The interior ministry said it received intelligence reports about unnamed terrorists plotting attacks against sensitive and vital sites in Tunis using car bombs and explosive belts.

According to an interior ministry official, orders have been given to intensify patrols and searches by the police and the army in certain parts of the capital and suburban neighborhoods.

Authorities also announced partial ban of traffic in some parts of Tunis as a preventive measure.

“The recent decision to ban traffic at the Habib Bourguiba Avenue and some nearby roads is a preventive measure to intercept suspicious vehicles and persons,” the official was quoted by official news agency TAP as saying.

Since the ouster of President Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia has been challenged by a surge of terrorist attacks that affected severely its economy hugely dependent on the tourism industry.

The most secular Arab North African country has suffered this year its two deadliest attacks. Two gunmen said trained in neighboring ailing Libya stormed the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March killing 21 people mostly foreign tourists.

In June, another gunman, also said to have undergone training in Libya, gunned down in a rampage 38 people including 30 Britons at a hotel in Sousse.

The two attacks have been claimed by IS which trains in lawless Libya youths from Tunisia and other countries in search of Jihadism. Tunisia has been reported the main terrorist provider in the Mideast conflicts, according to a UN report.

The report says that more than 3,000 young Tunisians have left the country to fight for Islamist militant groups in Syria, Iraq and neighboring Libya.