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A naval guardsman opened hearth close to an historical synagogue on the island of Djerba off Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast that has beforehand been the goal of Islamist militants, killing two guests and wounding 10 different individuals throughout an annual Jewish pilgrimage to the synagogue, the nation’s inside ministry mentioned Wednesday. One other safety officer was additionally killed.
The guardsman, who was stationed at a naval set up on the island, first killed his fellow guard and pocketed his ammunition late Tuesday earlier than heading towards El Ghriba synagogue in Djerba’s historical Jewish neighborhood, roughly half an hour’s drive away, the ministry mentioned in an announcement. Then he shot indiscriminately close to the synagogue till officers guarding the pilgrimage shot and killed him.
The authorities gave no motive for the taking pictures, through which a 42-year-old French nationwide and a 30-year-old Tunisian have been killed, in accordance with the international ministry. However the synagogue, the place a celebration for the annual Lag b’Omer competition was held Tuesday night time, has beforehand come beneath assault by Islamist militants, who’ve additionally focused different Tunisian vacationer websites.
Tunisia can also be in political and financial disaster. President Kais Saied has steered the democracy Tunisians had constructed over the past decade again towards autocracy whereas the financial system craters, pushing a rising variety of Tunisians into desperation.
The inside ministry assertion mentioned the authorities had begun an investigation “to search out out the explanations for this treacherous and cowardly assault.”
Six officers and 4 different individuals have been hospitalized for accidents of various severity, the assertion mentioned. The authorities didn’t identify any of the victims or the shooter.
Djerba, whose palm bushes and blue seascapes have lengthy drawn vacationers and European retirees, is house to greater than 1,000 Jews, one of many final important Jewish communities within the Center East exterior Israel. Native custom has it that the Jewish settlement there arrived in Roman instances, later constructing a synagogue, El Ghriba — “The Extraordinary” — that’s mentioned to accommodate a holy gate introduced two millenniums in the past from Jerusalem.
Numbering nearly 5,000 within the Forties, the neighborhood shrank as Djerbian Jews migrated to Israel or France, whereas extra Muslims moved into the world. There have been occasional assaults, together with an October 1985 incident through which a Tunisian guard who was imagined to be defending the synagogue shot on the congregation, killing 4 worshipers and a police officer and wounding 11. However generally, the Jews and Muslims of Djerba have coexisted peacefully.
El Ghriba, the place Tuesday’s taking pictures occurred, hosts an annual pilgrimage that attracts crowds of Jewish guests from Europe and Israel, an occasion that the federal government has for years inspired as a vacationer attraction. The authorities have offered tight safety to the pilgrimage since militants detonated a truck bomb on the synagogue in April 2002, killing 21 Western vacationers in an assault for which Al Qaeda claimed duty.
On Monday, the day earlier than the assault, the not too long ago arrived American ambassador to Tunisia, Joey Hood, visited the synagogue alongside america envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Embassy in Tunis had mentioned on Twitter.
The embassy was the positioning of considered one of Tunisia’s final terrorist assaults, through which one police officer exterior the embassy died in an explosion in 2020. Islamist militants additionally killed 60 individuals, most of them vacationers, in separate assaults on the seashore resort of Sousse and on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in 2015.
As with these assaults, Tuesday’s taking pictures may hurt the nation’s essential tourism business, one of many few sturdy spots in an in any other case flailing financial system. Customer numbers to Tunisia had simply begun to get better final yr after greater than a decade of blows, together with Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolt on the finish of 2010, the terrorist assaults and the coronavirus pandemic.
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