Woman suicide bomber blows herself up in central Tunis

Nine people were injured after a female suicide bomber blew herself up on Habib Bourguiba avenue, officials said.

2 min read

29 October, 2018

A strong explosion rattled Tunis on Monday, injuring more than nine people. [Twitter]

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up on Monday near police vehicles in the centre of the Tunisian capital, injuring nine people, the interior ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Sofiene Zaag told AFP that all but one of the casualties were police, after a strong explosion Monday rattled Tunis, the scene of major militant attacks in 2015.

Ambulances arrived swiftly at the scene, which was cordoned off by security forces. Shops lowered their shutters as panic gripped passersby.

An AFP photographer saw the bomber's body, apparently mostly intact, lying on the ground under one of the neatly-trimmed box trees that line the avenue.

The interior ministry, in a statement, identified the assailant as a 30-year-old woman with no known extremist affiliations, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Shortly before the blast, a small group of demonstrators had held a protest in the avenue against the killing near Tunis last week of a teenager by a customs agent.

It was the first attack in the Tunisian capital since 24 November, 2015 when a suicide bombing killed 12 security agents on a bus for presidential guards.

The country has been under a state of emergency since the attack, claimed by the Islamic State group.

Fatal militant attacks in Tunisia

2015 Bardo museum attack – 22 killed

2015 Sousse beach attack – 38 killed

2015 Tunis bus bombing – 12 killed

2016 Ben Guerdane border attack – 20 killed

2018 Jendouba border attack – 9 killed

Since the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, jihadist attacks in Tunisia have killed dozens of members of the security forces and foreign tourists.

In June 2015, 38 people were killed in a shooting rampage at the coastal resort of Sousse which targeted tourists, while an attack the same year on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis left 22 people dead.

The terror attacks decimated Tunisia's crucial tourism sector, which made up seven percent of gross domestic product.

Calm over the past two years has led to a rebound in the tourism industry, with more than six million foreign travellers visiting Tunisia in the first nine months of 2018, according to government data.

Arrivals rose 16.9 percent to 6.3 million in the nine months to the end of September, surpassing the number for the whole of 2014.

Tourism revenues in the first nine months of 2018 totalled just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), a rise of 27.6 percent year-on-year.

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