Tunisian police arrest 11 after deadly attack

Tunisian security forces hunting gunmen that killed a policeman near the Algerian border this week have arrested 11 suspects, a security official said yesterday. “Eleven men were captured, and another one is still on the run,” the official told AFP. On Monday, gunmen shot and killed Anis Jlassi, head of the police station in the western region of Kassarine and wounded four of his men. Security forces had been hunting for the gunmen near Dernaya. At the beginning of the operation, the security services said they were seeking five men and that they had located their camp, where an item of Algerian origin and a Tunisian SIM card were discovered. Earlier yesterday, a security official said Tunisian forces had lost track of the armed group. Meanwhile, the interior ministry said security forces defused on Tuesday an explosive device that a man had left on a bus in Kairouan in central Tunisia. It did not provide any other details. Clashes, strikes and attacks by hardline militants have multiplied across Tunisia in the run-up to the second anniversary of the start of Tunisia’s revolution, which will be marked on Monday. Members of a Tunisia’s militant movement, thought to number between 3,000 and 10,000, have been implicated in numerous acts of violence since last year’s revolt.