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Police and firefighters gathered Monday at the site of the attack in the center of Tunis.
Photo:
France / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
A woman blew herself up Monday in the center of the Tunisian capital, official media said, shaking the North African nation that has become the symbol of political unrest.
The explosion injured eight police officers and one civilian, according to the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior. The explosion took place on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis, an iconic pedestrian street in the heart of the city.
Video footage on the scene showed that the police were dragging barricades and pushing crowds of people along the tree-lined boulevard. The Interior Ministry has described the explosion as a suicide bombing and said the wounded had been transported to hospitals, according to the official TAP news agency.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The Interior Ministry said the 30-year-old woman who blew herself up was not known by the security authorities as an extremist.
Tunisia is the only country to emerge from the revolts of the Arab Spring which began at the end of 2010 with a semblance of a stable democracy, but the country is struggling with a stagnant economy and various security problems in recent years.
The country was one of the largest sources of recruits for the Islamic State, the extremist group having invaded parts of Iraq, Syria and Libya in 2014 and 2015.
The Islamic State has claimed a series of lethal attacks in Tunisia in recent years. Its activists killed dozens of foreign tourists and Tunisians in two separate attacks in 2015, one at the Bardo Museum in Tunis and the other on a seaside resort of Sousse.
Attacks by militants in Tunisia slowed as the Islamic State lost ground under the assault of a US-led military coalition throughout the region.
Write to Jared Malsin at [email protected]
