The country has suffered several deadly ISIS-claimed attacks in the last few years.
Tunisian security forces killed a senior leader of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) on Sunday. They believed he was plotting attacks on the country during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The Interior Ministry announced his death Monday, describing him as โdangerous,โ but did not identify the leader. Sofiene Sliti, a spokesperson for the Justice Ministry, told Tunisiaโs Shems FM radio the leader was a Tunisian national named Houssem Tlithi, AFP news agency reports.
The countryโs National Guard killed him Sunday night, wounding another jihadi and seizing materials for a suicide bomb and an assault rifle that the Interior Ministry said he was planning to use in โterroristโ assaults in the next four weeks.
The ministry said the ISIS leader had been a fugitive since 2014, and was hiding in the Mount Salloum region near Mount Chambi. He had eleven arrests warrants against him on suspicion of involvement in โterrorist operations.โ
The Jebel Chaambi area is a jihadi enclave on the lawless Algerian-Tunisian border where other violent Islamist groups such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Uqba ibn Nafi Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia find safe haven.
While it is unclear if the suspect had fought in Iraq and Syria, Tunisian authorities have long worried about returning jihadis who have traveled to fight abroad for radical Islamist groups. In March 2016, Tunisian ISIS fighters crossed the countryโs shared border with Libya to launch an attempt to overtake the border town of Ben Guerdane, killing 12 soldiers and police officers in the process.
The revelation of the ISIS leaderโs plans for Ramadan come just three days into the celebration, after the group called for an โall-out warโ on the West during the holy month. In an audio message circulated on encrypted messaging app Telegram on Friday, an ISIS member directs the latest propaganda message to the groupโs โsoldiers.โ
It goes on to demand attacks on Western โhomes, their markets, their roads and their forums.โ It said the โtargeting of civilians is beloved to us and the most effective…may you get great reward in Ramadan.โ
Tunisia is the Arab Springโs lone success story, with a democratically-elected government. But a series of ISIS-claimed attacks have blighted the countryโs economy. The governmentโs inability to address these sources of instability has allowed ISIS to maintain a presence in the country. Since November 2015, the country has been under a state of emergency following an ISIS-claimed suicide bombing on a bus carrying presidential guards that killed 12 in Tunis.
The tourism industry, which accounts for 8 percent of Tunisiaโs gross domestic product, suffered severe losses after two attacks in 2015โone at the Bardo museum in Tunis, the second a massacre in the coastal city of Sousse, which both targeted foreign tourists.
More than 4,000 Tunisians have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for extremist groups, making Tunisia the worldโs largest source of foreign fighters in the conflict. Government numbers from December 2015 indicated that 700 of them had returnedโa number that has likely grown as ISIS continues to lose territory in both countries.