Tunisia Breaks up Terrorist Cell Sending Youth to Hotbed of Extremism

Police officers outside parliament. Reuters file photo
Police officers outside parliament. Reuters file photo
TT

Tunisia Breaks up Terrorist Cell Sending Youth to Hotbed of Extremism

Police officers outside parliament. Reuters file photo
Police officers outside parliament. Reuters file photo

The Tunisian Ministry of Interior has broken up a terrorist cell that sends youth to hotbeds of militancy in Tajerouine town in Kef Governorate, 160 km northwest of Tunis.

The ministry said that anti-terrorist security apparatuses have arrested two members of the cell and issued charges against them on “suspicion of joining a terrorist organization” in Libya and Syria.

The two suspects admitted to investigators that they have been coordinating with a takfiri element in a neighboring country and that they are linked to two Tunisian fugitive terrorists, according to official information.

Earlier this year, Tunisia set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry into sending youth to terrorist hotbeds and promised to reveal the parties facilitating the process of thousands of Tunisians joining extremist organizations.

In this context, Assistant Rapporteur Laila Shtewi said in a press statement that the committee will soon hear the testimony of a number of former ministers, who mainly functioned between 2012 and 2014, which witnessed the peak of activity by networks that sent Tunisian youth to areas of tension in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Tunisian Interior Ministry said that it has arrested a takfiri element residing in Moknine following a tip-off on his whereabouts and after he was sentenced to prison in absentia.

The anti-terrorism unit in Monastir confirmed that the detainee was being pursued at the request of the Tunis Court of First Instance on charges of joining a terrorist organization, citing a three-year prison sentence for his participation in terrorist acts.

Notably, Tunisian security reports confirm that dozens of Tunisians have joined terrorist organizations in Syria and have passed through Libya, where they were trained to use weapons and make explosives.

Some have returned to Tunisia to commit terrorist acts such as the attack that was carried out by Jaber al-Khashnawi and Yassine al-Obeidi and targeted the Bardo National Museum on March 18, 2015 and Saifuddin Rizki's attack in a tourist resort in Sousse on June 26, 2015.



WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.