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"They left the country illegally last December for Libya, and they were able to train with weapons there," he told private broadcaster AlHiwar Ettounsi TV. Like Tunisia, Libya saw its longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi ousted during the regional wave of revolutions known as the Arab Spring. But unlike its neighbor to the west, Libya has been fraught with more instability and violence -- much of it perpetrated by Islamist militants, like those behind the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Once again an illusion of a moderate Islam is unmosqued. And it is ugly. Why do civilized men tolerate this barbarity? Why do civilized men walk on eggshells for fear of insulting savages, as if they had human sensibilities? They don't, and we'd be wise to buck up and fight this gruesome fight. We will have to. Instead, the media quislings allow Islamic supremacists and stealth jihadists to smear, defame and libel those who challlenge jihad and dare to speak the truth about the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth. To what end? Tunisians greet...

Tunisia blast was attack, says Germany The blast blackened the white walls of the synagogue Germany has said it believes a lorry explosion at a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 13 people, including eight Germans, was a deliberate attack and not an accident as first reports suggested. Taking into account the latest developments in the inquiry it was probably an attack Otto Schily Interior Minister Otto Schily said the latest information obtained by the German and Tunisian governments indicated that the blast on the resort island of Djerba had been planned. He said the explosion appeared to be a...

The German government said yesterday it was certain that terrorists were responsible for the blast in Tunisia earlier this month that killed 17 people, most of them German tourists. There is persuasive evidence that the explosion, originally described as an accident, was al-Qaida's first operation after the September 11 jetliner attacks on New York and Washington. Links between the key suspect in the Tunisia attack and an alleged member of the Hamburg cell at the heart of the September 11 conspiracy have been traced. Speaking after talks in Tunis with President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the German interior minister, Otto...

TUNIS, April 14 (Reuters) - The Tunisian government said on Sunday it had no new information suggesting a truck explosion that killed at least 17 people outside a synagogue on the southern resort isle of Djerba was a deliberate suicide attack. The government was reacting to remarks made by German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Saturday. He said that based on the latest information both German and Tunisian governments had obtained, it appeared that Thursday's blast had been planned. A total of three Germans died overnight of their injuries, raising the death toll from the explosion of a tanker filled...

In Tunisian Island of Djerba, Five Killed, 20 Injured When Truck Blows up Near Ancient Synagogue Suspected Terrorist Attack on Jewish Shrine.

TUNIS, April 12 (Reuters) - Tunisia sought on Friday to deflect suspicions that a blast which killed at least seven people outside North Africa's oldest synagogue site might have been a suicide attack. The country's eight daily newspapers all reinforced the official line that the blast was an accident and not linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Tunisian tour guide died overnight of injuries sustained in the blast, a tourism official said, taking the confirmed death toll to seven. Four German tourists, a policeman and the driver of the tanker, which was filled with cooking gas, died when the truck...

MADRID: A Pakistani is among five men arrested in Spain on suspicion of involvement in the suicide attack on a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba in which 21 people died, investigators said today. The other four being held were described as Spanish nationals. Reports immediately after their arrest in Valencia, in southwest of the country, on Friday had described them as of Tunisian origin, while the nationality of the other suspect, detained in the northern town of Logrono, had not been given. All five were due to be transferred to Madrid to appear before the Audiencia National,...

Germany has for the first time raised the possibility that a truck bombing at a Tunisian synagogue that killed 16 people was an al-Qaida terrorist attack. If confirmed, the blast on Djerba island would be the first terror attack by Osama bin Laden’s terror network since September 11. ‘‘We are considering all possibilities, but those that we must consider include al-Qaida structures,’’ Interior Minister Otto Schily said. Schily said he will travel to Tunisia this weekend to meet investigators and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, possibly on Monday. The number of dead in the attack rose to 16 today with...

PARIS (AP) - French authorities investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States have arrested two men - a Moroccan and a German believed to be a top al-Qaida recruiter - in the last two days at the Paris airport, judicial officials said Thursday. The officials said they believe there's a link between the two suspects. On Sunday, Karim Mehdi, a 34-year-old Moroccan, was taken into custody at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the officials said on condition of anonymity. He had arrived from Germany and planned to leave to the French island of La Reunion...

Suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network claimed responsibility for the blast near a synagogue which killed 15 including ten German tourists last week in Tunisia, the Al-Qods Al-Arabi newspaper said.The London-based Arab daily, which did not say how it obtained the claim, said "the Al-Qaeda netowrk of Sheikh Osama bin Laden claims the operation against the Djerba synagogue.""This suicide operation is a response to the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," said a document, which the newspaper claimed was a genuine Al-Qaeda statement.The statement said Tunisian Nizar bin Mohammed Nawar, aka...

BERLIN, Apr 18, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Germany has for the first time raised the possibility that a truck bombing at a Tunisian synagogue that killed 16 people was an al-Qaida terrorist attack. If verified, the blast would be the first terror attack by Osama bin Laden's terror network since Sept. 11. "We are considering all possibilities, but those that we must consider include al-Qaida structures," Interior Minister Otto Schily said on ARD television Wednesday. Schily said he intends to travel to Tunisia this weekend to meet with investigators and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, possibly on...

Berlin, Apr 16, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- German security services on Tuesday arrested an alleged Al Qaeda terrorist suspected of involvement in last week's bomb attack on a historic Tunisian synagogue in which ten German tourists were among the 16 people killed. The Federal Criminal Investigation Department (BKA) said they had taken into custody in the central city of Duisberg a person they believe had been in contact with the driver of the truck loaded with natural gas canisters that crashed into the synagogue. Tunisian authorities had said they believed the blast on the island of Djerba was...

Tunisia's prime minister says 19 people, including tourists, were killed Wednesday when gunmen targeted visitors to the country's Bardo Museum. Two of the gunmen were also killed when security forces moved in to end the standoff. Among the dead are 17 tourists from Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain. Two members of the security forces were also killed during the operation, Prime Minster Habib Essid said during a press conference. At least 24 others were injured in the attack near parliament.

At least 19 people have been killed in Tunisia after two gunmen stormed the Bardo national museum – one of the country’s leading tourist attractions in the capital, Tunis – sparking a three-hour hostage siege. Tunisia’s prime minister, Habib Essid, said on Wednesday afternoon that 17 of the dead were foreigners – from Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland – calling the attack a cowardly assault targeting the economy. Three hours after the attack started at about midday local time (11am GMT), an interior ministry spokesman said two gunmen had been killed, as well as one security officer, and that all...

Militants shot and killed at least eight people at a leading museum in Tunisia Wednesday and have taken several more hostage, the county’s interior ministry said. Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said on Radio Mosaique that only one of the dead in Wednesday's attack was a Tunisian. He did not provide nationalities for the others. Poland's Foreign Ministry announced that three Poles were among the wounded. Security forces filled the area around the National Bardo Museum in Tunis after the attack. Tunisia's parliament building, near the museum, was being evacuated, according to a tweet by parliament member Sayida Ounissi....

ISIS has released a videotape of the public beheading of twenty-one Coptic Christians somewhere along the coast of Libya. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t even know what a Coptic Christian was. So I looked it up. “Coptic” means “Egyptian” and Christians living in Egypt identify themselves as Coptic Christians. Pretty simple. Copts were organized between A.D. 42 – A.D. 62 and consider John Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark, to be their founder. Over the years, Egypt fell under the colonial rule of Italy which demanded loyalty to Roman rulers. The Copts refused to show...

Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized a university in the Libyan city of Sirte, a faculty member and residents said, days after a video showed them staging a convoy parade. Islamist militants have made inroads into parts of the North African oil-producing country, exploiting a power vacuum created by a violent struggle for control between two competing governments. Also read: Exclusive: ISIS chief Baghdadi in new pictures The incident came after the coalition of Islamist militias in control of the capital Tripoli known as Fajr Libya (Dawn of Libya) said they were sending armed units...

Harith al Nadhari recorded an audio eulogy for Mohammed al Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al Sharia Libya, shortly before his own death. Shortly before his own death in a US airstrike on Jan. 31, Harith al Nadhari, a senior sharia official in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), recorded an audio eulogy for another slain jihadist, Mohammed al Zahawi. Ansar al Sharia Libya confirmed earlier in the month that Zahawi, the group's leader, had died of wounds he suffered while fighting in Benghazi. And Nadhari wanted to make it clear that al Qaeda considered Zahawi to be...

The site of Zita contains remains of a Roman forum and a Punic child sacrifice precinct. During the summer of 2015, a team of archaeologists and other specialists and students will be exploring a large mound that contains the remains of an ancient city that once commanded the highest point on a peninsula that juts out from the southern coast of Tunisia into the Mediterranean. Visible from the island of Djerba, which was anciently known as Calypso of the Lotus Eaters in Homer's The Odyssey, the mound features the remains from a Roman bathhouse, ceramic kilns, evidence of metallurgy, and...