Dozens of militants stormed through
a town in Eastern Tunisia early Monday morning, attacking public and military posts and starting a
firefight with security forces that left at least 53 people dead.
According to the New York times,
the clashes at Ben Gardene, 18 miles from the border with Libya, were the
second in the district in a week and came in at a time of growing concern that
the war in Libya, where the Islamic state has aggresively expanded, was
spilling into Tunisia.
The assault started just after 5am
with coordinated attacks on a military barracks, a national guard station and a
police station, according to the Defence and Interior ministries.
After the dust had settled, 35
militants, 10 security agents, 1 soldier and 7 civilians, lay dead.
Although officials did not identify
the attackers, this was the first such assault to target a Tunisian military installation, and most suspicions pointed to
militants based in Libya as being behind the raid.
Last month, American warplanes
killed at least 43 people in an attack on an Islamic State training camp in Sabratha,
Libya, 60 miles from the border with Tunisia.
The target of that attack was a
militant commander linked to attacks on western tourists at a museum and a
beach resort in Tunisia last year. American commanders say such strikes are
part of an effort to contain the spread of the Islamic State while the US and
its allies consider a much wider campaign of airstrikes against the group in
Libya.
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