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A suicide bomber blew himself up on Monday afternoon on a busy Tunisian road, killing nine people and injuring nine others, mostly police officers, the Tunisian Interior Ministry said.
The 30-year-old woman unleashed the explosion just before 2 pm on the popular Habib Bourguiba Avenue in the Tunisian capital, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Sofiene Zaag, quoted by the TAP news agency.
In a statement, the Interior Ministry said that the suicide bombing, unknown until then authorities, had been detonated near a police patrol. He said eight police officers and one civilian were injured. Apart from the bomber, no other deaths have been reported.
An on-site AP reporter saw many ambulances arrive to take the wounded to the hospital. The avenue, as well as several adjacent streets, was cordoned off by the police.
According to TAP, Zaag reportedly stated that the explosion occurred in front of the Tunis City Theater. The avenue Habib Bourguiba is considered the cultural, political and economic heart of Tunis – and is sometimes called the Champs-Élysées of Tunisia.
Tunisian radio Mosaique FM said that Interior Minister Hichem Fourati was on the scene. The attacker was wearing a homemade bomb belt with a small amount of explosives. The station cited a security source it did not name.
The bomber came from the Mahdia region of eastern Tunisia and was previously unknown to the security services. Security services broke into her home after the attack.
Tunisian authorities are on maximum alert in recent years as a result of a series of attacks, including a deadly shooting at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis in 2015, causing 22 deaths, many of them European tourists.
In 2015, in an attack claimed by an Islamic State on a Tunis highway, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus carrying members of the Tunisian presidential guard, killing 12 people.
