Tunisia says it kills senior leader of group linked to al-Qaeda

“The DNA test just confirmed that Mourad Gharsalli was shot dead yesterday (Friday),” presidential spokesman Moez Sinaoui said in a message posted on Twitter on Saturday.
 
Security forces on Friday killed five militants during a counter-terrorism offensive near the town of el-Ktar in the central region of Gafsa.
 
Reports said that the extremists had four Kalashnikovs, a pistol, two grenades, several mobile phones, documents and a large amount of money.
 
Gharsalli, 32, was said to be among the dead. He had been on the wanted list of the Tunisian Interior Ministry on terror charges.
 
The militant is said to have been one of the leaders of the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigades, Tunisia’s main militant group that has been accused by Tunisian authorities of being behind several recent attacks, including a massacre at the Bardo National Museum in the capital, Tunis, back in March. This is while the Takfiri ISIL terrorist group has claimed responsibility for that attack, which killed 21 foreign tourists and a policeman.
 
Tunisian authorities have arrested 127 suspected terrorists since last month’s massacre of tourists at a beach resort, according to Kamel Jendoubi, the minister heading the crisis group on the incident.
 
On June 26, a Tunisian student went on a shooting rampage at Port El Kantaoui and killed 30 Britons, three Irish nationals, two Germans, one Belgian, one Portuguese and a Russian. The ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack.
 
Elzbieta Karska, the head of a UN working group, has said that almost 5,500 Tunisians have joined the ranks of ISIL in recent years.