“Terrorist” attack or isolated act? Tunisian authorities are investigating on Wednesday to elucidate the circumstances of an attack carried out by a gendarme who killed two of his colleagues and two worshipers outside a synagogue on the island of Djerba, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage, before being shot dead.
The Ghriba synagogue, the oldest in Africa, had already been targeted in 2002 by a suicide truck bomb attack that killed 21 people.
“A preliminary criminal investigation has been opened,” Fethi Bakkouche, spokesman for the court in Medenine, on which the island of Djerba depends, told AFP.
The attack came in two stages as hundreds of worshipers took part in the annual Jewish Ghriba pilgrimage which was coming to an end on Tuesday evening.
A security device was deployed in the perimeter of the synagogue, closing all the roads giving access to it, noted AFP correspondents on the spot.
According to the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior, the gendarme who fired the shots first shot and killed one of his colleagues in the port of Djerba and seized his weapon and ammunition. He then went to the outskirts of the synagogue, some fifteen kilometers away, where he opened fire on the police who were providing security for the place, before being shot.
Two faithful, a Tunisian and a Franco-Tunisian were killed by the assailant’s fire, and four others were injured and evacuated to a hospital, according to the authorities.
Six gendarmes were also injured by the assailant’s shots. One of them succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday evening, according to the Interior Ministry.
“Cousins”
According to the former Tunisian Minister of Tourism, René Trabelsi, a figure of the Tunisian Jewish community present in the synagogue at the time of the attack, the faithful killed are two cousins: Aviel Haddad, a 30-year-old Tunisian Jew, and Benjamin Haddad , 42, who lived in France and was in Djerba to take part in the pilgrimage.
In an interview with Mosaïque FM radio, he said that “without the rapid intervention of the security forces, carnage would have taken place because hundreds of visitors were on the scene”.
According to Mr. Trabelsi, the assailant was wearing his gendarme uniform and a bulletproof vest.
France on Wednesday condemned “with the greatest firmness” this attack, describing it as a “heinous” act, according to the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The United States also condemned the attack. “We express our condolences to the Tunisian people and salute the rapid action of the Tunisian security forces”, reacted on Twitter Matthew Miller, the spokesperson for the State Department.
Organizers say more than 5,000 Jewish pilgrims, mostly from abroad, took part in the Ghriba pilgrimage this year, which resumed last year after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
traditions
Organized at 33e Jewish Passover day, the Ghriba pilgrimage is at the heart of the traditions of Tunisians of the Jewish faith, who are only 1500, mostly settled in Djerba, against 100,000 before independence in 1956.
Pilgrims also traditionally come from European countries, the United States or even Israel, but their number decreased considerably after the 2002 attack.
The attack comes as tourism is rebounding strongly in Tunisia after a sharp slowdown during the pandemic. This key sector for the economy had been seriously affected after the 2015 attacks against the Bardo museum in Tunis and a hotel in the seaside resort of Sousse, the toll of which had risen to 60 dead including 59 foreign tourists.
“Like all other countries, Tunisia is not spared from this kind of destabilization attempt,” Tourism Minister Mohamed Moez Belhassine said on Wednesday from Djerba, Tunisia’s top tourist destination. “We are mobilized to make the tourist season a success”.
The attack comes as Tunisia is going through a serious financial and institutional crisis that has worsened since President Kais Saied seized full power in July 2021, shaking the democracy born of the first Arab Spring revolt in 2011.