Exclusive: Shooting of Salafists In Tunisia May Spur More Attacks
Violence by radical Islamists has made a recent reappearance in the impoverished neighborhoods surrounding Tunis. Salafists are attempting to replace the area's security forces, who no longer have full control over the towns, writes Mischa Benoit-Lavelle in this exclusive report from Douar Hicher.
Standing between two armored cars outside of the national-guard post he commands, Nadhem Bannouri recounted the story of the officers who on Tuesday night, Oct. 30, opened fire on a crowd of Salafists that had stormed a national-guard post, killing the imam and muezzin (official who calls to prayer) of a local mosque. Armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails, the crowd forced its way into the under-manned post and stole a pistol and a teargas-grenade launcher.
As Bannouri tells it, the officers’ backs were to the wall — the post has no emergency exit — and they were forced to shoot.
Douar Hicher is a small, poor neighborhood west of Tunisia’s capital and just a ten-minute taxi ride away from Bardo, the seat of the Constituent Assembly, the country’s interim governing body. The neighborhood, along with nearby Hay Ittidhamen and Hay Intilaka, is part of a band of poverty and unrest surrounding the wealthy capital. The neighborhoods were among the first in the capital region to explode during Tunisia’s revolution, and have subsequently seen several other violent riots.
Bannouri says that the area is now also part of a band of Salafism, radical political Islam aimed at establishing Shariah law.
