Six Tunisian security chiefs sacked following massacre

Tunisia’s prime minister has sacked six leading security officials days after three gunmen attacked a Tunis museum, killing 21 people.

The ousted officials include the director of Tunisia’s tourist police and the police chief for the neighbourhood around the National Bardo Museum, government spokesman Mufdi Mseddi said.

The decision was made after the prime minister, Habib Essid, visited the attack site and noted security problems, the spokesman said. President Beji Caid Essebsi had also criticised security failings around last week’s attack.

Mr Mssedi said the six also included an intelligence brigade chief, the Tunis district police chief, the traffic police commander and a commander for the capital’s Sidi Bachir district.

“Prime minister Habib Essid visited the Bardo Museum yesterday and took note of several security failures there,” Mr Mssedi said.

Militant gunmen killed 20 foreign tourists, including Japanese, Polish, Italian and Spanish visitors, last Wednesday as they got off buses at the Bardo Museum, inside the parliament compound that is normally heavily guarded.

It was the worst attack in more than a decade in Tunisia, testing the North African country’s young democracy four years after the revolt that overthrew autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and opened the way for free elections.

One police officer working at the museum had been arrested for abandoning his post during the attack, local radio and media reported. Officials did not immediately confirm the arrest. Japan’s parliament speaker Kazuyuki Nakane visited Tunisia on Monday to discuss the case with Tunisia’s foreign minister.

“We gave our condolences for the families of the Japanese victims,” foreign minister Taieb Baccouche told reporters outside the Japanese embassy in Tunis.

Foreign dignitaries have been invited to Tunis on Sunday to participate in a march against terrorism in the same way that France brought world leaders to Paris after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine by Islamist militants in January.

The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for attacking the museum, which hosts a trove of Roman mosaics.

Several well-armed groups in neighbouring Libya have pledged allegiance to IS. Tunisia is also fighting extremists claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda in its western mountains.

Separately, one soldier was killed and three others were wounded when a mine blew up their vehicle in a mountainous area of Tunisia known to be a refuge for al Qaida-linked Islamic radicals.

Lt Col Belhassen Oueslati, a Tunisian defence ministry spokesman, said the incident occurred on Sunday near the Algerian border.

Al-Qaeda-linked radicals have staged attacks against army and politicians in the area for the past two years.

PA/Reuters