TUNIS, Jan 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Tunisian Interior Ministry announced that a 22-year-old woman was arrested at Tunis-Carthage International Airport on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack.
“On Jan 10, the anti-terrorist unit under the National Guard arrested a 22-year-old woman at Tunis-Carthage Airport who arrived from Turkey,” the ministry said in a statement.
The woman said she travelled to Turkey in the summer of 2020 and then to Syria in 2021 with the help of a Syrian national, where she joined a terrorist organization and was trained for a suicide mission in one of Tunisia’s tourist destinations, according to the ministry statement.
The suspect added that she “had communicated with a Tunisian national during her stay in Syria, who was going to equip her with an explosive belt once she landed on Tunisian soil.”
Investigation showed the woman’s accomplice in Tunisia was recently imprisoned for his involvement in planning and organizing attacks against senior state officials at the end of last year, according to the Tunisian authorities.
Tunisian security forces have thwarted most militant plots in recent years and they have become more efficient at responding to those attacks that do occur, Western diplomats say.
In November police shot and wounded an extremist who sought to attack them with a knife and cleaver in the capital.
The last major attacks in Tunisia took place in 2015 when militants killed scores of people in two separate assaults at a museum in Tunis and a beach resort in Sousse.
