Police raid Islamic hideout close to Tunis

Officials said six people were killed Friday in a police raid on an Islamist hideout on the outskirts of Tunis, a day after a policeman was killed in clashes with the militants and ahead of landmark general elections set for Sunday. Interior ministry officials said Friday that the six people, including five women, were killed in an assault on the house in which the militants were holed up. The raid followed ministry warnings earlier in the day that an assault on the hideout was imminent. 

"Our special forces have killed six people from this terrorist group that included five women, who also exchanged fire with our forces," interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told Reuters by telephone. One gunman was among the dead while another was hospitalised along with two children, Aroui told reporters at the scene. Police negotiators in the suburb of Oued Ellil to the west of Tunis had been trying to persuade the militants to give themselves up after surrounding the house and following heavy exchanges of gunfire, officials and a Reuters witness said.

Heavily armed security forces used teargas and stun grenades to try to force at least two suspected militants out of the house, in which officials had said several women and children were being held. “We’ve called on them to let the woman and children out, but they refused ... they are family members,” Aroui told reporters ahead of the raid. “We have to move cautiously here.” Tunisia has struggled to subdue hardline Islamists and jihadists opposed to the transition to democracy following the 2011 fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and the military has cracked down hard on militants in the run up to the election. Security and economic development are major concerns for Tunisians voters who hope the poll will consolidate the country’s democracy after a year of political disputes that almost scuttled the transition process.

Tunisia on Thursday also closed border crossing points with Libya for most traffic as a security measure, officials said. With Libya struggling to control Islamist militants and armed factions, neighbours like Tunisia are worried about spillover. Aroui said that as part of pre-emptive raids, security forces also captured two suspected militants in Kebeli in the south of Tunisia who had ties to the group in Oued Ellil. Earlier this month, security forces arrested a group of Islamist militants, including two women, saying they were planning attacks in the capital before the vote.

Since the 2011 revolt, Tunisia has advanced toward full democracy, unlike the region’s other countries where Arab Spring uprisings brought about changes of government. Among militant groups operating there is Ansar al Sharia, which the United States considers a terrorist organisation and blames for a 2012 attack on the US embassy in Tunis.
Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa said recently Tunisia has arrested some 1,500 suspected jihadists this year, among them hundreds who fought in Syria’s civil war and could pose a danger at home.

Four years after street protests forced Ben Ali and his entourage to flee to Saudi Arabia, driven out by anger over corruption and repression, Tunisia’s transition has been praised as a model for an unstable region.
But the new government needs to take on the low-intensity conflict with Islamist militants as well with pressure from international lenders to reform public spending subsidies to curb a deficit without stoking social tensions.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)