Police in Tunis, Tunisia has arrested 12 members of an ISIS cell and seized bomb-making materials in an operation conducted in the capital following a suicide attack last month. The interior ministry further said that they dismantled four takfiris (Sunni extremist) sleeper cells in several parts of Tunisia.
A laboratory producing explosives and electronic components has also been uncovered in a Tunis suburb as well as a very large quantity of explosive and chemical products, along with a drone equipped for remote bombings.
The announcement follows an attack by 30-year-old female suicide bomber Mna Guebla on October 29 that wounded 26 people on the capital’s busy upmarket Avenue Habib Gourguiba, in the first militant attack in the capital since November 2015.
The investigations after Mna revealed a larger terror network operating both in Tunisia and outside the country that facilitated the attack that killed dozens of people. It further revealed that Daesh is training its operatives to make the bombs themselves as well as give instructions on how and where to detonate them for maximum casualties.
The four dismantled cells are suspected of having been in contact “with terrorist officials entrenched in the Tunisian mountains to organize a series of attacks targeted at sensitive targets with weapons, a car, poison or remote explosives.
