Gunmen Attack Tunisia Museum, Killing 8 and Taking Hostages

Gunmen in military uniforms attacked an art museum in downtown Tunis on Wednesday, killing eight people and taking others hostage, a spokesman for the interior ministry said.

Early reports said that those killed included seven foreign visitors and one Tunisian, and that there were two or three gunmen. Tunisian state media outlets said that the gunmen were holding ten hostages, and that as many as fifteen people had been injured.

The attack reportedly began around noon or shortly after, at a time when hundreds of visitors were on their way into the museum. Interior ministry officials said the gunmen were armed with grenades and assault riffles.

Helicopters buzzed over the area in the afternoon, and Tunisian state television said they were evacuating people from the area, possible including those injured in the attack.

The site of the attack, the National Bardo Museum, is near the national Parliament in downtown Tunis. By early afternoon, the Parliament building had been evacuated, and police officers surrounded the area in a standoff with the gunmen.

The identity and motivation of the attackers were not immediately clear.

Officials said it was possible that the Parliament, rather than the museum, was the original intended target of the attack; some reports said that legislators were discussing an antiterrorism law on Wednesday.

Tunisia was the country where the Arab Spring revolts against autocratic rule began four years ago.

Of all the countries affected, Tunisia has made the most successful transition toward democracy, recently completing presidential and parliamentary elections and a peaceful rotation of political power. Security forces have struggled against occasional attacks by Islamic extremists, but they have usually occurred in mountainous areas far from the capital.

Recruiters for the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have sought to take advantage of the new level of freedom after the revolution, as well as the economic disruptions, high youth unemployment and resentment of the country’s often abusive police force, which is left over from the old authoritarian order. Those factors have helped make Tunisia one of the biggest sources of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State’s fight in Syria and Iraq.