Tunisia to close 80 mosques after shooting attack
Tunisia has decided to close 80 mosques that are operating outside the government’s control, a day after a terrorist attack killed dozens in the African country.
“All 80 mosques will close within a week,” Tunisian Prime Minister Habib al-Essid announced on Saturday, adding that Tunisians must “coordinate and help” the government as confronting terrorism is a national duty.
“No mosque that does not conform to the law will be tolerated,” said the premier.
The move comes after a gunman opened fire and killed 38 people, mostly foreign tourists on vacation in the resort city of Sousse situated on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the country’s north.
Security forces reportedly shot one of the two attackers dead, while the other managed to flee.
Friday’s attack was claimed by the ISIL terrorist group, which is also wreaking havoc in other parts of the world, mainly in Iraq and Syria.
This is the second attack that targeted foreign tourists in Tunisia this year. In March, a coordinated attack by several gunmen killed 21 people, mostly European nationals, who were visiting a museum in Tunis.
The March attack was also claimed by the ISIL extremists.
The Friday assault in Sousse was one of the three outbreaks of violence fueled by ISIL terrorists from the African continent to the Middle East and Europe.
In Kuwait, at least 27 worshipers were killed in a bomb attack on a Shia mosque in the capital Kuwait City.
Meanwhile, a man with links to ISIL rammed a car into a gas factory in the Isère region near Grenoble in southeastern France, causing a blast that wounded two people. He also decapitated his former employer and pinned the severed head to the factory’s gates.
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