A third suspect in the deadly attack on Tunisia’s Bardo museum is on the run, the country’s president says. This comes after the Interior Ministry released CCTV footage showing how two assailants spared the life of a man seconds before going into action.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry has released footage recorded by a
security camera showing the deadly attack in Bardo museum, which
took 23 lives, 18 tourists among them on Wednesday. The footage
captured two militants walking through the museum in the
country’s capital with Kalashnikovs in their hands.
The video also shows they encountered a third man with a backpack
whom they briefly acknowledged.
READ MORE: 17 tourists, 2 locals slain in Tunis museum
attack
“For sure there were three because they have been identified
and filmed on surveillance cameras,” Tunisian president Beji
Caid Essebsi said in a TV interview Sunday referring to the
attackers. “There are two who were executed and one who is on
the run somewhere. But in any case, he won’t get far.”
CCTV footage: #Tunis gunmen
spare life of a man seconds before museum attack https://t.co/3MlcAIqJeK pic.twitter.com/FYB238tstc
— RT (@RT_com) March
22, 2015
The search for the unnamed person is ongoing as police patrol the
streets of the capital stopping people and checking their
identities. However, it is still unclear whether the man was
indeed complicit or it was narrow escape.
The two gunmen who carried out the assault were killed by
security forces. They were identified as Tunisians Yassine
al-Abidi, 20, and Hatem Khachnaoui, 26, both of whom had
reportedly been trained in Libya.
The president also said his country was at war with the
extremists who recruited several thousands of Tunisians for
military struggle in Syria and Iraq. They have no credible
connection to Islamic belief, he added.
READ MORE: Tunisia terror: British woman killed
in Tunis museum shootings
Bardo Museum in Tunisia’s capital is located in the same building
as the National Assembly. When the shooting was first reported
Wednesday morning, it was first believed that MPs were under
attack. However, the assailants proceeded into the museum taking
a group of tourists hostage.
Foreigners killed in the attack included one British national,
three Japanese, two Colombians, two Spaniards, an Australian, a
Pole and a French citizen, according to Tunisian PM Habib Essid.
Forty-four were left injured after the attack. Islamic State
militants claimed responsibility for the assault.
The latest attack is the deadliest involving foreigners since the
2002 suicide bombing on a synagogue on the Tunisian island of
Djerba, where twenty-one people died, including 14 Germans, two
French tourists and five Tunisians.
The Tunisian president
also said on French TV that a monument would be built to
commemorate the dead, ITV News reports.