Two officers stabbed outside Grand Synagogue in Tunisia
The attacker had previously served jail time in a terrorism case
Residents walk along the streets of Tunis, May 15, 2015. (Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images)
(JTA) – Two policemen standing guard at the Grand Synagogue in the center of the Tunisian capital of Tunis were stabbed on Thursday.
It is not clear whether anyone was in the synagogue at the time of the attack, AFP reported.
The suspect, who was imprisoned in 2021 over a terrorism case and has since been released, wounded the officers but was overpowered.
Interior ministry spokesman Fakher Bouzghaya told AFP that an investigation was underway.
While the country’s current Jewish population is estimated at around a thousand, Tunisia once had a booming Jewish community of around 100,000. The population started dwindling after the nation won independence from France in 1956 and state-tolerated violence against Jews proliferated following Israel’s victory over its neighbors in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The African country also hosts an annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue in Riadh, a centuries-old synagogue in an island town where thousands of Jews once lived. Al-Qaeda terrorists set off an explosion outside the El Ghriba Synagogue in 2002, killing 20 people, including 14 German tourists.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
