SOUSSE, Tunisia, Nov. 17 (UPI) — Tunisian authorities on Tuesday said they foiled a fresh plot by suspected Islamist militants to attack a beach resort in Sousse, on the country’s eastern Mediterranean coast.
Tunisia’s interior ministry said security forces arrested more than a dozen people who were suspected of receiving training in Iraq and Syria, the BBC reports.
The suspects were allegedly planning to attack security centers, politicians and beaches in Sousse, where militants killed 37 people near the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in June. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
The arrests come two days after at least five militants and one Tunisian soldier were killed during a raid by security forces in the Mount Mghila area near the city of Sidi Bouzid, in central Tunisia.
Authorities launched the operation following reports of militants in the area decapitating a 16-year-old shepherd before forcing the boy’s friend to deliver the severed head, wrapped in plastic, to his family.
Two men arrested earlier this month in connection with an attempt to kill the deputy of a secularist political party in Tunisia on Oct. 8 were members of an IS affiliate in Libya, according to Tunisian media.
On Monday, meanwhile, the interior ministry said authorities arrested seven women suspected of belonging to the media wing of an IS affiliate in Tunisia known as Jund al-Khilafa.
Tunisia is where the 2011 Arab Spring originated and has been considered a democratic success story in comparison to its neighbors, but the BBC reported it is also the biggest exporter of Islamist militants, with some 3,000 Tunisians fighting in Iraq and Syria.
