Tunisia and security

In Tunisia on March 5, president Moncef Marzouki lifted a 3-year-long state of emergency that had been declared after president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted by a popular uprising in 2011. It had given police and armed forces more authority to act against suspected militants, particularly the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, which formed after the 2011 revolt. 

In its antiterror campaign, the military killed seven insurgents in Tunis on Feb. 4, seizing 800 kilograms of explosives, and on Feb. 9 they arrested eight more, preventing a suicide-truck attack on a Tunis prison and a raid on a police barracks. 

On Feb. 16, insurgents in the northwest province of Jendouba set up a fake checkpoint and killed three security officers and a civilian.