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At around 12:30 p.m. today in Tunisia, the northernmost country in Africa, a group of gunmen dressed in military uniforms opened fire on tourists at the National Bardo Museum in the capital of Tunis, near the national Parliament building. According to the New York Times, 19 people were killed, including eight people who were leaving a bus to enter the museum and 10 others who were taken hostage and then executed.
In a news conference, Prime Minister Habib Essid said that 22 others were injured, and television stations in Tunisia reported that two of the gunmen were killed in a firefight, but a possible third shooter and accomplices may still be at large. Officials believe that the Parliament may have been the intended target of the attack, and that an antiterrorism law was to be discussed there today. So far no group has taken credit for the attack.
Business Insider reports that the National Bardo Museum has "one of the world's greatest collections of Roman art," and claims that the attack is "a sign that there are actors within the country who violently resent Tunisia's unique history, along with its special place within the post-Arab Spring Middle East." There have been seemingly unrelated attacks on large art collections in the recent past where works have been destroyed, including one by ISIS in Iraq where 3,000-year-old works were smashed on video, but so far it doesn't seem like the group in Tunisia were interested in the art.
[via New York Times]
