A police officer killed two security officers and two visitors in an attack near Africa’s oldest synagogue in Tunisia, the government has said, amid an annual pilgrimage to the island of Djerba that draws hundreds of Jews from Europe and Israel.
The attack was staged on Tuesday by a police officer at a naval installation on Djerba who used his weapon to shoot a colleague and seize his ammunition before heading towards the Ghriba synagogue, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The attacker fired indiscriminately at security units located near the synagogue, killing the two visitors and another security officer, as well as injuring five security officers and four visitors. Security forces then shot him dead, the Interior Ministry said.
The Tunisian foreign ministry said one of the visitors killed was French and one was Tunisian.
Video posted on social media that Reuters was not immediately able to verify showed frightened looking people standing in a courtyard as a gunshot rang out. Residents of the island said they heard an exchange of fire.
Authorities did not identify a motive for the attack but Islamist militants have previously targeted the pilgrimage in Djerba and have staged other attacks in the country.
According to organisers, more than 5,000 Jewish faithful, mostly from overseas, participated in this year’s pilgrimage to Ghriba, which resumed in 2022 after two years of pandemic-related suspension.
Tunisia’s last significant attack was a blast targeting police outside the US embassy in 2020 that killed one officer. Two suicide blasts targeted police outside the French embassy in 2019, also killing one officer.
Islamist militants killed scores of tourists in two separate attacks at a beach resort and a Tunis museum in 2015.
The annual pilgrimage to Africa’s oldest synagogue regularly draws hundreds of Jews from Europe and Israel to Djerba, a holiday destination off the coast of southern Tunisia, 500 km from the capital Tunis.
The pilgrimage has had tight security since al-Qaida militants attacked the synagogue in 2002 with a truck bomb, killing 21 western tourists.
Mainly Muslim Tunisia is home to one of north Africa’s largest Jewish communities. Though they now number fewer than 1,800 people, Jews have lived in Tunisia since Roman times.
US ambassador Joey Hood visited the synagogue on Monday along with the US envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, according to a US embassy post on Twitter.
