Tunisia Announces Three Dates for Upcoming Elections

The head of the Independent High Authority for Elections in a meeting to set the upcoming electoral dates. (Independent High Authority for Elections)
The head of the Independent High Authority for Elections in a meeting to set the upcoming electoral dates. (Independent High Authority for Elections)
TT
20

Tunisia Announces Three Dates for Upcoming Elections

The head of the Independent High Authority for Elections in a meeting to set the upcoming electoral dates. (Independent High Authority for Elections)
The head of the Independent High Authority for Elections in a meeting to set the upcoming electoral dates. (Independent High Authority for Elections)

The Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) in Tunisia has unveiled the initial dates for holding the presidential, local, and municipal elections.

The ISIE stressed that a detailed calendar is being prepared to stage the elections on the time agreed, adding that the move would resume the political path suggested by Tunisian President Kais Saeid in 2021.

The official spokesman for the Authority, Muhammad Al-Talili Al-Mansari, said that Tunisia is currently in the preparation phase for the municipal elections, which he considered a priority at the current time, in addition to the elections of the National Council of Regions and Districts expected in October, and presidential elections expected in 2024.

As for the reason behind choosing October, Mansari remarked that the date takes into consideration the social stability of the Tunisian families and the return of the Tunisian diaspora to their work abroad, in addition to the weather that is usually adequate at that time of the year.

Adel Al-Barinsi, a former member of the ISIE, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the ISIE led by Farouk Bouasker should contact the parliament led by Ibrahim Bouderbala to fill the vacuum in the current parliament seats and determine a date for a partial parliamentary election.

The current parliament still has a vacancy in seven seats dedicated to Tunisians abroad, in which only 154 out of 161 MPs were elected due to the difficulty of organizing the process as no one ran for those elections.

Barinsi added that the ISIE is likely to be put under pressure pertaining to its impartiality and independence toward all social and political parties running for the elections, as well as regarding the financial resources sufficient for the success of the elections.

One voting station could cost the state’s treasury around 40 million dinars ($13.4 million), added Barinsi.

Mansari affirmed that it is early to speak about the presidential elections, adding that the Authority considers them regular elections scheduled for fall 2024 based on the elections law for 2014.

Several political activists have announced their intention to run for the presidential elections for 2024, including the President of the “Third Republic” party Olfa Hamdi, and the President of the New Carthage Movement Nizar Al-Shari.

Also, several political parties including Democratic Current and Workers' Party are preparing for the presidential elections by holding conferences and electing new political figures that can compete with Saeid.

 



Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
TT
20

Israel’s Military Admits to Shooting at Ambulances in Gaza

 Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)
Palestinians buy clothes in a shop next to a destroyed apartment building in preparation for Eid al-Fitr celebrations at Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City Friday March 28, 2025.(AP)

Israel’s military admitted Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles,” with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

Israeli troops launched an offensive there on March 20, two days after the army resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza following an almost two-month-long truce.

Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists,” the military said in a statement to AFP.

“A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops... The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”

The military did not say if there was fire coming from the vehicles.

It added that “after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles... were ambulances and fire trucks,” and condemned “the repeated use” by “terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes.”

The day after the incident, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said in a statement that it had not heard from a team of six rescuers from Tal al-Sultan who had been urgently dispatched to respond to deaths and injuries.

On Friday, it reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue vehicles—an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle—and said a vehicle from the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also “reduced to a pile of scrap metal.”

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, accused Israel of carrying out “a deliberate and brutal massacre against Civil Defense and Palestinian Red Crescent teams in the city of Rafah.”

“The targeted killing of rescue workers—who are protected under international humanitarian law—constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime,” he said.

Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that since March 18, “Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas have killed hundreds of children and other civilians.”

“Patients killed in their hospital beds. Ambulances shot at. First responders killed,” he said in a statement.

“If the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them.”