Two raids on terrorist cells in Tunisia earlier this year demonstrate security forces’ ability to detect and neutralize plots against the country while also highlighting the persistent terrorist threat.
Security forces staged the raids in January in the Kasserine governorate in the western part of the country. A January 3 operation stopped an attack near a weekly market, killing the ringleader, Seddik El Abidi. He was a Tunisian native and a member of the Jund al-Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate) battalion, an offshoot of the Islamic State group, the news agency Tuniscope reported. Authorities arrested an accomplice and later detained 10 people linked to the plot, according to news reports.
Four weeks later, authorities dismantled a four-member terrorist cell near the Tunisian-Algerian border. All four members were killed, including a man who detonated a suicide vest after refusing to surrender. Authorities said that all members of the cell belonged to the same family. The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior said the raid was based on “precise intelligence tracking the group’s presence in the region,” Middle East Online reported. There was no connection between the two operations, officials said.
The two incidents show the “enduring but geographically confined” nature of extremist groups operating in Tunisia’s western mountains, researcher Dario Cristiani wrote for the think tank Jamestown.
Tunisia has not had a major terrorism attack since May 2023, when a gunman killed two worshippers and three security officers on the island of Djerba at the country’s oldest synagogue.
Part of Tunisia’s approach to terrorism dates to 2015, when insurgents staged three major attacks, including one at a beach resort in Sousse. A gunman killed 38 people at the resort. Tunisia responded to the attacks by declaring a nationwide state of emergency that remains in effect. In January 2026, President Kais Saied extended it until December 31, Reuters reported.
The continuous state of emergency, along with Saied’s consolidation of his power in 2021, has resulted in an effective means of preventing terrorism, the Jamestown report said. But the measures also have drawn “sustained criticism” from civil liberties advocates.
Under the emergency framework, the Interior Ministry can ban public gatherings, impose curfews, conduct searches of shops and homes, and monitor the press, radio broadcasts, cinema and theater productions, all without prior judicial authorization, The New Arab news website reports. “Rights organisations, both domestic and international, have warned for years that the framework falls short of safeguards required under international human rights law, particularly given its indefinite extension,” The New Arab reported.
Tunisian authorities have reported that in 2025, they dismantled 62 terrorist cells and arrested 2,038 people linked to extremism. The Tunis Afrique Presse agency reported that authorities recorded 2,058 terrorist-related acts during the year.
“These high-stakes operations involved a coordinated effort between various specialized units, including national intelligence services and dedicated counter-terrorism brigades,” The African Press Agency reported.
THREE DYNAMICS
The January raids illustrate three key dynamics of Tunisia’s counterterrorism operations, the Jamestown report says:
The Jamestown report concludes that terrorism within Tunisia has a narrow geographic scope and a shallow organizational depth. The result has been isolated plots and limited manpower, suggesting “containment rather than escalation.”
“The mountainous west continues to host isolated militants, and critical infrastructure remains a theoretical vulnerability rather than an active battlefield, with security institutions that maintain an obvious operational superiority.”
