Man attacks two police officers with knife outside Tunisian parliament

A young man stabbed two policemen in front of the Tunisian parliament on Wednesday, seriously wounding one of them before being arrested, authorities said.

The early morning attack by the man in his mid-20s left bloodstains spattered on the ground outside an entrance to parliament, next door to the famed National Bardo Museum that was the site of a deadly attack in 2015.

A spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Sofiene Sliti, said the assailant set upon the policemen with a knife at around 8:00 am (0700 GMT) stabbing "one in the back of the neck and another at the level of his eyes".

The seriously wounded officer underwent an operation in hospital and remained in intensive care, AFP reported.

The interior ministry said the assailant was arrested and had confessed to having adopted an "extremist" ideology three years ago. "Killing them (police), he believes, is a form of jihad," it said.

Prosecutors said the assailant, an unemployed computer science graduate born in 1992, was from a suburb of Tunis and did not have a criminal record.

An official at the police station where the man was taken after being detained said the attacker appeared "very aware of what he did".

"He spoke calmly and showed no remorse," the official said, asking to remain anonymous.

"He told us: 'This morning, I prayed and I decided to do something for jihad. I saw the policeman in front of me. To me, he's a 'tyrant'. And I did what I did,'" the official quoted the suspect as allegedly saying.

Since its 2011 revolution, which sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia's security forces have faced a series of extremist attacks that have claimed the lives of more than 100 soldiers and police.