Suicide bomber targets Tunisia hotel, nearby attack foiled

A Tunisian security guard stands near a police vehicle in front of the tomb of Tunisia's independence leader Habib Bourguiba after security forces foiled a planned suicide attack on it in the southern city of Monastir. (AFP/Bechir Bettaieb)

TUNIS: A suspected jihadist blew himself up Wednesday in the resort town of Sousse as another planned bombing nearby was foiled, the first suicide bids in Tunisia for more than a decade.

"A man blew himself up on a beach in Sousse," ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Laroui told AFP, adding that no one else was killed.

Witnesses said the attack took place at around 0830 GMT at the four-star Riadh Palms hotel near the centre of the coastal town, a popular tourist destination 140 kilometres (90 miles) south of Tunis.

Just half an hour later, in the neighbouring town of Monastir, 20 kilometres along the coast, security forces averted another suicide attack by an 18-year-old man at the tomb of Tunisia's independence leader Habib Bourguiba.

Laroui said those behind the thwarted attack and the beach bombing were Tunisian "Salafist jihadists," describing one as dark-skinned and saying the other had just returned from an unnamed neighbouring country.

Since the 2011 revolution that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has been rocked by violence blamed on radical Islamist groups suppressed under the former dictator, including the killings this year of two opposition MPs.

But Wednesday's planned suicide bombings are the first in Tunisia since 2002, when an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda killed 21 people at the ancient Ghriba synagogue on the resort island of Djerba.

The Tunisian presidency condemned the suicide bombing and the thwarted attack on the mausoleum, insisting they would not succeed in "derailing" the country's transition process, referring to the national dialogue currently taking place to end months of political deadlock.

The bomber in Sousse tried to enter the hotel by a back door but was spotted by the guards and chased from the complex, blowing himself up instead on the nearby beach which was deserted, witnesses told AFP.

The interior ministry said anti-terrorist units were sweeping the area looking for an accomplice who fled, and an inquiry has been opened into the circumstances of the attack.

Shortly after the blast, a spontaneous protest was held in the centre of Sousse "to condemn terrorism," according to witnesses.

In Monastir, Laroui said a planned attack on the compound of the Bourguiba mausoleum was foiled when a young man carrying explosives was arrested before he managed to blow himself up.

A photographer said residents saw the man behaving suspiciously in a cemetery near the tomb and reported him.

Presidential security guards at the compound then arrested the man, identified as Aymen Saadi Berchid from northern Tunisian, according to private radio station Mosaique FM, which said four arrest warrants had previously been issued for him.

Last year, a Salafist was jailed for eight months for desecrating the tomb, a lavish building with two minarets and a gold dome that was commissioned by Bourguiba himself, Tunisia's staunchly-secular first president.

Wednesday's planned attacks are likely to fuel fears for the country's stricken tourist sector, which has been largely untouched by the surge in jihadist violence since Ben Ali's ouster and which generates vital revenues for the cash-strapped government.

In Tunis, extra security was deployed at hotels amid fears of another attack, while the Tunisian federation of travel agencies set up a crisis cell to support those staying at the Riadh Palms in Sousse.

Tunisia's ruling Islamist party Ennahda, which swept Tunisia's first post-revolutionary elections in October 2011, has been sharply criticised by the opposition for failing to combat a rise in jihadist militancy.

The army on Tuesday launched a "huge" operation to track down jihadists in the central Sidi Bouzid region, after six policemen were killed in the area last week.

The government has linked Tunisia's armed jihadists to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

But it has admitted lacking adequate resources to combat them, and some 15 soldiers and police have been killed since December in the hunt for militants holed up in the Mount Chaambi region near Algeria.