Attackers with knives killed a Tunisian National Guard officer and wounded another Sunday before three assailants were later shot dead in a firefight, the military force said, labelling it a “terrorist” act.
The stabbing attack took place in the tourist district of Sousse, the coastal city hit by the worst of Tunisia’s jihadist attacks of recent years, when 38 people, most of them Britons, were killed in a 2015 beachside shooting rampage.
A patrol of two National Guard officers was targeted in the knife attack in Sousse, 140 kilometres (80 miles) south of the capital Tunis, said National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli.
“One died as a martyr and the other was wounded and is hospitalised,” he said, adding that “this was a terrorist attack”.
The attackers had first rammed the gendarmes with a vehicle at about 6:40 am (0540 GMT).
After the knife attack, security forces pursued the assailants, who had taken the officers’ guns and vehicle, through the Akouda district of the city’s tourist area of El-Kantaoui, said Jebabli.
- AFP