Tunisia

NOVANEWS IS Group Claims Responsibility for Attack on Tunisian Museum Police officers and a journalist run outside the Parliament in Tunis March 18, 2015. This was the deadliest attack in Tunisia in 13 years. At least 23 people were killed, 20 of whom were foreign tourists. The Islamic State extremist group releases a recording Thursday claiming responsibility for the attack at the Bardo Museum in the Tunisian capital Wednesday, during which 23 people were killed, including 20 foreign tourists, a local and two of the gunmen, according to Reuters. Over 45 people were also injured in the attack. The extremists, who have declared a caliphate in large swathes of Iraq and Syria and is active in chaotic Libya, praised the two attackers in an audio recording in Arabic, calling them "knights of t...

NOVANEWS Seven foreigners among dead in Tunis museum attack, interior ministry says An image taken by one of the hostages inside the Bardo Museum. Photo: SCMP Pictures At least eight tourists were killed and others were taken hostage by militants who attacked Tunisia’s parliament compound, which includes a museum, a spokesman for the interior ministry said on Wednesday. Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said on Radio Mosaique that only one of the dead in Wednesday’s attack was a Tunisian. “There are eight victims 'including “seven foreigners',” the spokesman told reporters. The National Bardo Museum is adjacent to the national parliament building, which was being evacuated after the shooting. The museum is a leading tourist attraction that chronic...

NOVANEWS Seven foreigners and one Tunisian dead, according to interior ministry, after three men reportedly dressed in military-style clothing storm Bardo museum in Tunis  Exterior of the Bardo national museum in Tunis. Photograph: Alam Seven foreigners and one Tunisian have died after the country’s prestigious Bardo museum came under attack, according to Tunisia’s interior ministry. The shooting broke out about midday local time (11.00 GMT), according to local reports. Radio Mosaique, a private radio station, reported that three men dressed in military-style clothing may have taken hostages inside the museum, adjacent to the national parliament building. The museum chronicles Tunisia’s history and includes one of the world’s largest collections of Roman mosaics. Tunisian se...

NOVANEWS At least eight people have died following a shooting at a museum in Tunis, the Tunisian Interior Ministry says. Two militants disguised as soldiers carried out the attacks, while hostages are still believed to be in the building. Militants dressed as soldiers have attacked the Tunisia Assembly, local journalists say. The parliament, who was in session during the time of the attack, is located in Bardo Palace, which is also home to a national museum. A spokesman for the Tunisian Interior Ministry, Mohammed al-Aroui has confirmed a hostage situation is taking place at the Bardo Museum. The Ministry says that seven tourists have been killed and the other victim is a Tunisian citizen. There are has been unconfirmed reports that the foreign tourists were from France, Spain and Italy...

  NOVANEWS Former Tunisian Interior minister Habib Essid A top security official of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is to be named as prime minister designate following Tunisia's first free presidential and parliamentary elections, his party said Monday. Habib Essid will be formally tasked with forming a government later Monday by President Beji Caid Essebsi, their Nidaa Tounes party said. He will then have a month, extendable once, to win approval for his line-up in parliament, in which the party holds only 86 of the 217 seats after October's landmark election. Essid, 65, was a top interior ministry official under Ben Ali's iron-fisted regime but was kept on after the 2011 revolution that inspired the Arab Spring. After a stint as interior minister, he served as security ad...

NOVANEWS by Lisa Bryant Tunisians cast their ballots Sunday in the second and final round of a landmark presidential vote that marks the culmination of a rocky transition to democracy. Preliminary results have not been released, but candidate Beji Caid Essebsi's anti-Islamist party quickly claimed victory over his rival, interim president Moncef Marzouki. Essebsi's campaign manager said initial indications showed a victory for the 88-year-old former minister. Marzouki's campaign manager dismissed the claims, saying the election is too close to call. Results are expected early this week. Essebsi, who led the first round of presidential voting in November, heads the anti-Islamist Nidaa Tounes party. It won the most seats in parliamentary elections in October. The party is a loose coal...

NOVANEWS I recently returned from a short trip to Tunis, where I had the chance to check in with a variety of folks about the current political scene.  I met with senior members of both Nedaa Tounis and the Ennahda movement (including Rached Ghannouchi), along with a variety of journalists and civil society activists.  I was particularly interested in exploring the role of the media in post-uprising Tunisia, for a paper I'll be circulating soon (spoiler: like in Egypt, it's played an extremely negative role). But I was also keen to look for answers to a question which has been nagging at me ever since last month's Nedaa Tounes victory in the Parliamentary elections: why doesn't anyone seem to be as worried by the prospect of Nedaa Tounes "dominating" Tunisan politics as they were by...

NOVANEWS A girl stands near the rubble of a house, destroyed when an Islamist militant accidentally killed himself while preparing explosives, Jedeida, Tunisia, Aug. 2, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Zoubeir Souiss) By: Mourad al-Hattab Business News (Tunisia)   Tunisia is going through the most significant political and socioeconomic decline of its contemporary history. The country’s overall situation reminds us of ancient times, when human beings were struck by disasters and unable to escape this unavoidable fate. According to the Bible, to convince the pharaoh to let the enslaved people of Israel go, God brought seven dreadful plagues upon Egypt (Exodus, 7-12): The Nile became contaminated, preventing Egyptians from drinking its water; frogs covered Egypt; the dust ...

NOVANEWS Despite a recent flurry of media reports about young Tunisian girls returning from 'sexual jihad' in Syria, there seems to be little concrete evidence of their existence. (photo by REUTERS/Ali Jarekji) By: Hazem Al Amin Al-Hayat (Pan Arab). “Oh, lovers on Habib Bourguiba Avenue! … No, our girls did not go to Syria looking for love! They were forced to go there,” said an old drunken man, who was preaching to passersby late at night on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in the Tunisian capital, facing the headquarters of the Interior Ministry. The latter is the site where Tunisia’s interior minister dropped the bomb by mentioning the “100 Tunisians girls who came back from sexual jihad [in Syria].” The speech by Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou, which he delivered...