In a televised speech the president said terror group want to make them live with horror, but the horror will be returned back on the terrorist camps. It called on all Tunisians to unite, saying “in these historic moments we should renew our trust in the security forces and army”.
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According to the NY Times, Tunisian President Beji Caïd Essebsi said that the explosion was a “cowardly terrorist attack”.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, Tunisia has been plagued by Islamist violence since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He wasn’t in the bus when it was attacked Tuesday in the center of the capital.
Essebsi cancelled a trip to Europe and said Tunis would be placed under curfew until Wednesday 5am.
The bomber detonated his belt aboard a bus carrying presidential guards to the palace on the outskirts of town. Police have surrounded the blast site and erected security barriers. Witness Bassem Trifi, a human rights lawyer, described “a catastrophic spectacle”.
He said: “I saw at least five corpses on the ground”, adding: “This was not an ordinary explosion”. “This was not an ordinary explosion”.
In June, thirty British people died in an attack near Sousse where an Islamist gunman massacred holidaymakers.
The explosion took place on a tree-line avenue in the heart of the Tunisian capital.
If confirmed it was a suicide bomber, it would be the first such attack in Tunisia since October 2013 when an attacker blew only himself up on a beach in the resort town of Sousse.
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In March, armed men claiming to be local affiliates of al-Qaeda, attacked the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, killing more than twenty people, mostly European tourists.
