Tunisian forces shot dead three suspected Islamic militants who rammed their vehicle into security officers and attacked them with knives, killing one and injuring another in the coastal resort town of Sousse, authorities said Sunday.
Sousse was the site of Tunisia’s deadliest extremist attack in 2015, when a massacre killed 38 people, most of them British tourists.
According to an interior ministry statement, the assailants took refuge in a school after the attack and died in a shootout with security forces.
The North African nation’s prime minister, Hicham Mechichi, appeared to suggest that the assailants’ planning may have been faulty.
Speaking in Sousse, at the site of the attack, he announced the arrest of a fourth suspect who had been aboard the vehicle that rammed the National Guard officers.
Hatem Zargouni, director of security for Sousse, said the assailants stabbed the officers and then fled with their weapons.
The injured officer was hospitalized.
The previous attack in Sousse on June 26, 2015, dealt a heavy blow to Tunisia’s tourism sector, a pillar of its economy.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack.
