Four Tunisian soldiers killed during patrol near Algeria border

Tunisia’s mountainous area is a hotbed of Islamist insurgent activity.

Four Tunisian soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device in the country’s western mountains on Wednesday, the Defense Ministry said.

The soldiers were conducting patrols in the Moghila area between Kasserine and Sidi Bouzid, which is frequented by al-Qaeda-linked extremists. A spokesperson for Tunisia’s Defense Ministry, Mohamed Zekri, told The Associated Press that Jund al-Khalifa, linked to al-Qaeda’s local franchise, carried out the attack.

Tunisia’s government has largely limited the country’s Islamist insurgency to the western mountains with US military support in recent years.

Jihadist activity picked up in the country’s rural mountainous region in 2013 following the Arab Spring revolution that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The North African country is considered the lone democratic success story.

Nonetheless, Islamist insurgents targeted the government and attempted to attack the US Embassy in Tunis in 2013, just days before the deadly assault on the US Embassy in Benghazi in neighboring Libya.

In 2015, terrorists launched two massacres against foreign tourists, prompting international outrage. A lone gunman killed 39 people, mostly British tourists, in a mass shooting at a beachside resort in Sousse that June. Three gunmen took hostages and killed 22 people at the National Bardo Museum three months prior.

The capital has seen sporadic attacks in more recent years. Last March, two suicide bombers detonated themselves near the US Embassy. In 2018, a suicide bombing wounded 20 people on a main street in the capital’s downtown.

US military aid dollars to Tunisia have increased tenfold since the Arab Spring, with American policymakers seeing the fledgling democratic country as a strategic wedge between war-torn Libya and US allies in western North Africa.

Protests have continued in cities across Tunisia even as the country marked the 10-year anniversary of its Arab Spring revolution last month. Some of the demonstrations have turned violent in recent weeks, prompting the deployment of the army and the arrest of several hundred people.

Tunisia continues to be beset by unemployment, government corruption and police abuses, demonstrators say. Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi has voiced his support to address the protestors’ grievances but has condemned the violence.