Tunisian Security Services Dismantle Cell Linked To Terrorists Holed Up In Algeria And Libya

The Tunisian Interior Ministry said, on Thursday, that the research and Inspection Tunisian National Guard in Sidi Bouzid, have succeeded in breaking up a terrorist cell comprising five elements, including three girls.

According to a Tunisian Interior Ministry statement, posted on its website, these individuals, now held in custody, admitted that they regularly communicated with each other as well as with terrorist elements in Algeria and Libya via the social networking sites through aliases in order not to be spotted.

The same source added that the detainees were working to convince new elements to join terrorist groups operating in hotbeds of tension, notably the terrorist organization “Daesh”.

In this connection, the Algerian security authorities had previously warned their counterparts in Tunisia that terrorist groups are trying to sneak in different ways into the two countries’ common border with Libya.

For his part, the defense minister of Tunisia, Mr Ferhat Horchani, stressed the vital importance of further boosting cooperation between his country and Algeria, pointing out that security and military coordination between the two brotherly countries is at its best and has reached its highest level.

In an earlier anti-terrorist operation, the Tunisian investigating judge to the judicial pole of fight against terrorism issued eleven warrants against several individuals suspected of forming a terrorist cell in the region of Sfax.

In a statement, on Wednesday 14 December to TAP, a spokesman for the Tunis court of first instance and the judicial pole, Mr Sofiane Selliti, said that the Tunisian national unit of investigation into crimes of terrorism (the Gorjani national security directorate) had dismantled a “Takfiri” terrorist cell in Sfax area made up of 11 members.

The cell’s nefarious mission consisted, according to the same source, in supporting logistically and materially the terrorist groups holed up in the country’s heights. An important quantity of explosives primary materials were seized during the counter-terrorism operation.

The cell members were planning deadly terrorist acts on the Tunisian soil to sow mayhem and to bring the government down, Mr Selliti explained.