Suspected Al Qaeda attack in Tunisia kills four policemen

TUNIS // Four Tunisian police were killed in a pre-dawn attack on Wednesday by suspected Al Qaeda-linked militants near the Algerian border.

The attack was the first deadly assault this year on government forces in Tunisia, where the police and the army have been hunting down militants blamed for a string of attacks on security forces.

“A group of 20 terrorists attacked a patrol of the National Guard,” two kilometres from Kasserine, which lies at the foot of Mount Chaambi, said interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui.

Mr Aroui said the attackers were members of the Al Qaeda-linked Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, the main Tunisian armed group active along the border with Algeria.

Prime minister Habib Essid has vowed to “exterminate” of the “cowardly terrorist attack”.

Mr Essid, who was sworn in earlier this month and heads a coalition government, had said his priority was to restore security and “battle against terrorism”.

“We will chase the terrorists, the assassins, into their hideouts in order to exterminate them and clean up the country,” he said in Tunisia after the attack.

The policemen were buried on Wednesday afternoon in their hometowns, including Kasserine where one of the coffins was draped in the Tunisian flag.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault, but a Twitter account close to Okba Ibn Nafaa praised the attack.

Okba Ibn Nafaa claimed responsibility for a July 2014 attack that killed 15 soldiers in the Chaambi region in what authorities said was one of the deadliest assaults in the army’s history.

Tunisia has seen a rise in extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

* Agence France-Presse