NOVANEWS
IS Group Claims Responsibility for Attack on Tunisian Museum Police officers and a journalist run outside the Parliament in Tunis March 18, 2015.
This was the deadliest attack in Tunisia in 13 years. At least 23 people were killed, 20 of whom were foreign tourists.
The Islamic State extremist group releases a recording Thursday claiming responsibility for the attack at the Bardo Museum in the Tunisian capital Wednesday, during which 23 people were killed, including 20 foreign tourists, a local and two of the gunmen, according to Reuters. Over 45 people were also injured in the attack.
The extremists, who have declared a caliphate in large swathes of Iraq and Syria and is active in chaotic Libya, praised the two attackers in an audio recording in Arabic, calling them “knights of the Islamic State” armed with machineguns and bombs.
Tunisians, according to Reuters, make up the one of the largest groups of foreign fighters in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and their country’s young democracy, which has cracked down on militancy at home, was a clear potential target.
“We tell the apostates who sit on the chest of Muslim Tunisia: Wait for the glad tidings of what will harm you, o impure ones, for what you have seen today is the first drop of the rain,” the Islamic State group said in the recording.
Earlier in the day, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi announced nine people have been arrested in connection with the attack on the iconic Tunisian museum.
Four of the detainees, according to authorities, are directly involved in the attack and the other five have alleged ties to a terrorist cell. Tunisian security forces Wednesday killed two of the gunmen, who have now been identified as Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. There is currently a manhunt for the two or three other gunmen who escaped the security forces.
“I want the people of Tunisia to understand firstly and lastly that we are in a war with terror, and these savage minority groups will not frighten us,” said President Essebsi. “The fight against them will continue until they are exterminated.”
The majority of the people killed in the attack were foreign tourists from Japan, Italy, Colombia, Spain, Australia, Poland and France. Two Tunisian citizens were also killed by the attackers.
This was the deadliest attack on civilians in Tunisia in the past 13 years and has been considered a major blow to tourism, which is one of the main sources of income in the country.
In early 2011, Tunisians overthrew their leader and began a rocky road toward democracy. Last December, even though other Arab Spring nations have devolved into civil war, Tunisia successfully had a peaceful democratic transition of leadership.
The Islamic State group on Twitter were gleeful over the attack and urged Tunisians to “follow their brothers.” There is no evidence that the attackers of the museum were connected with the Islamic State group.
