Tunisian president says third suspect in museum attack on the run

(GNN) - Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi said on Sunday that a third gunman involved in an attack that killed 23 people, mostly foreign tourists, at a Tunis museum last week was on the run.

The shootings at the museum inside Tunisia's parliament compound was one of the worst militant attacks in Tunisian history and brought to light the threat posed by Islamist militants to the young democracy, four years after its "Arab Spring" revolt.

Two gunmen were shot dead at the scene and authorities have so far arrested more than 20 people, of which ten officials believe were directly involved in the attack. Some had recently returned from fighting for Islamist militant groups in Syria and Libya.

"For sure there were three because they have been identified and filmed on surveillance cameras," Essebsi said in a televised interview with Europe 1 radio, iTELE and Le Monde newspaper.

"There are two who were executed and one who is on the run somewhere. But in any case, he won't get far," Essebsi said.

A Tunisian security source said investigations were still ongoing, but the third suspect appeared to have been involved in directing the attack and logistics, rather than as a gunman. He was known to authorities as an extremist, the source said.

"A third is being sought, he was a participant," the source said.

Tourism minister Salma Loumi told state news agency TAP that world leaders had been invited to participate on Sunday in a planned march against terrorism in Tunis.

Islamic State militants -- who have taken over parts of Iraq and Syria -- have claimed responsibility for the attack. But social media accounts tied to an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Tunisia have also published purported details of the operation.

Whoever was responsible, the Bardo attack illustrates how Islamist militants are turning their sights on North Africa. A particular focus is neighboring Libya, where two rival governments are battling for control, allowing Islamic State to gain a foothold.

(Reuters)(Reporting Patrick Markey and Tarek Amara in Tunis; and Gregory Blachier in Paris; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Italy wants North African countries to rescue migrants at sea

(GNN) - Italy wants Egypt and Tunisia to play a role in rescuing stricken migrant vessels in the Mediterranean, a government planning paper showed, so that survivors could be taken back to African instead of European ports.

The plan, which calls for the European Union to support the proposed Egyptian and Tunisian operations, was prepared by the Italian home affairs ministry and seen by Reuters.

It represents an attempt to stem the growing flow of people risking their lives to reach Europe, most of whom try to get to Italy, often on overcrowded or defective vessels.

Last April Italy rescued 4,000 migrants from boats trying to reach European shores in only 48 hours in a deepening immigration crisis that is being made worse by the turmoil in Libya, which has grappled with chaos and rampant militias since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In one of the worst such tragedies in October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. The Italian Coast Guard managed to rescue 155 survivors but more than 360 migrants drowned.

Italy is already in bilateral talks on sea-rescue operations with Tunisia and Egypt, but joint diplomatic action of the EU is crucial to get them involved, the paper, said.

According to the plan, Tunisian and Egyptian naval units would intervene to rescue migrants in areas close to Libya, which is the main departing point for migrants bound for Europe, but has no effective control of its territorial waters because of the ongoing conflict between its warring factions.

Once the migrants are taken out of the sea by the Egyptians or the Tunisians, they could be taken to North African ports, the paper said.

The Tunisian and Egyptian operations should be carried out in cooperation with Italian and European authorities and be adequately financially and technically supported by the EU, Italy said.

Last November, Italy stopped its Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean, citing cost concerns.

Since then, Triton, a European border control operation, was launched under the lead of the European border agency Frontex.

Italy says that the number of migrants that arrived at its shores in the fist two months of 2015 was almost twice as big as in the same period of last year, when the Mare Nostrum operation was in place, the paper said.

(Reuters)(Editing by Dominic Evans)

Japan confirms one citizen killed, three wounded in Tunisia attack

(GNN) - Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday one Japanese citizen was killed and three were wounded in an attack on Tunisia's national museum.

"We cannot forgive this despicable act of terrorism for whatever the reasons. We strongly condemn it," Kishida told reporters.

Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said earlier five Japanese were among 17 people killed when gunmen wearing military uniforms stormed Tunisia's national museum on Wednesday.

Kishida did not refer to that but said there was information other Japanese people had been wounded and the Japanese government was checking.

The attack in Tunisia was one of the worst militant attacks in a country that had largely escaped the region's "Arab Spring" turmoil.

Kishida said Japan would continue to fight terrorism in cooperation with the international community.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Robert Birsel)

U.S. diplomats' return to Libya could be more hazardous than exit

#GNN - If evacuating U.S. #embassy staff from #Libya was perilous - three F-16 fighters and Marines in Osprey aircraft flew overhead a road convoy from Tripoli to Tunisia - sending them back in could be politically hazardous for President Barack Obama.

U.S. diplomats work in dangerous places such as Baghdad and Kabul, but the ghosts of Benghazi hang over the U.S. presence in Libya after an attack on a U.S. mission in the eastern Libyan city in 2012 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans, preparing to battle Obama's Democrats in mid-term elections in November, have been quick to characterize the chaos in Libya as further evidence of the administration's weak foreign policy.

The eight or so U.S. diplomats who had been in Libya and a security staff numbering 200 or more drove out of the country on Saturday under a heavy escort, amid the worst violence in the capital and in Benghazi since Washington and its NATO allies helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The State Department said embassy staff would return to Tripoli once it was deemed safe.

But analysts said that would be a difficult decision to make given raw memories of the Benghazi attack, which sparked sustained Republican criticism of Obama and his then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton - who is widely expected to run for the White House in 2016.

Republicans charged that the administration did not provide sufficient security for the mission, did not respond quickly enough and then tried to cover up its shortcomings. Harm to another diplomat in Libya would be disastrous for Obama.

Jon Alterman, head of Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said the United States could not afford to think of the symbolical impact of withdrawing its diplomats when lives were at risk.

“The job of an embassy is to talk to a government. If it’s unclear who you can talk to and who can help provide security then that shifts the equation," Alterman said.

"Embassies rely a lot on local governments to both secure them and also to provide intelligence that helps us secure them. And if that isn’t working then you have to look quite closely at you security plan and whether you can actually protect the facility.”

But he added he did not expect the embassy closure to be long-term, like that in Somalia after anti-U.S. violence in the 1990s, and noted that Tripoli embassy had been evacuated during the fall of Gaddafi and then re-staffed.

LOOKS COUNT
Some of the impact of evacuating an embassy is appearance.

“Of course it looks bad – countries normally try to keep their embassies open as long as they can," said Francois Heisbourg, a security expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank in Paris.

“What would be a problem would be if the Americans stayed out for long period. The decision to close may have come quite naturally, but it’s going to be a very difficult responsibility to reopen the embassy. That is one where the ghosts of Benghazi are going to come back again.”

The State Department sought to play down suggestions that the evacuation would further hamper efforts to stabilize Libya.

“Although embassy personnel are no longer in Libya, we continue to engage the Libyan government on a wide range of issues,” department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Saturday.

The surging violence in Libya prompted fresh criticism of Obama from Republicans keen to portray the administration as weak on all fronts.

"The administration sort of took its focus off of Libya and things have been getting worse for quite some considerable time now," Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House foreign relations committee, told CNN on Saturday after news of the U.S. diplomats' departure.

Robin Wright of Washington's Wilson Center think tank, who was a close friend of Ambassador Stevens, said all NATO countries, not just the United States, had "increasingly abandoned Libya over the past three years."

"Now the central government has crumbled to the point that it doesn’t even control Tripoli Airport, much less large swaths of the country," she said. "The long-term danger to the region is that Libya itself crumbles - either into a failed state, or unruly fragments that, in turn, have rippling impact on Africa and the Arab world."

(GNN,Reuters,AIP)(Reporting and writing by David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Missy Ryan, Mark Hosenball, Phil Stewart, Emily Stephenson and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Frances Kerry)

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U.S. evacuates #Libya #embassy after 'free-wheeling #militia violence'

#GNN - The United States evacuated its embassy in Libya on Saturday, driving diplomats across the border into Tunisia under heavy military escort after escalating clashes broke out between rival militias in Tripoli.

Security in the Libyan capital has deteriorated following two weeks of clashes between brigades of former rebel fighters who have pounded each other with rockets and artillery fire in southern Tripoli near the embassy compound.

The violence is the worst seen in Tripoli and in eastern Benghazi since the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Western governments fear Libya is teetering toward becoming a failed state just three years after the NATO-backed war ended his one-man rule.

Three F-16 fighters provided air support and Osprey aircraft carrying Marines flew overhead the U.S. convoy as a precaution, but there were no incidents during the five-hour drive from Tripoli to Tunisia, U.S. officials said.

"Security has to come first. Regrettably, we had to take this step because the location of our embassy is in very close proximity to intense fighting and ongoing violence between armed Libyan factions," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement.

U.S. sources familiar with the matter said there were about eight U.S. diplomats and 200 or more U.S. security personnel in Libya and all had been evacuated.

A Reuters reporter outside the embassy later saw no sign of movement or personnel on the perimeter gate of the compound, which lies a few kilometers from the airport.

Since one militia attacked Tripoli airport two weeks ago, fighting has killed at least 50 people in the capital, shut down most international flights and forced the United Nations and Turkey to pull out their diplomatic staff.

Tripoli was quieter after the evacuation. But at least 25 people were also killed in a day of clashes between Libyan special forces and Islamist militants who are entrenched in the eastern city of Benghazi, security and hospital sources said.

Speaking to reporters in Paris before holding talks on the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described Libya's situation of "free-wheeling militia violence" as a real risk to U.S. staff with clashes around the embassy.

Britain's foreign office on Saturday also urged British nationals to leave by commercial means, due to "ongoing and greater intensity fighting in Tripoli and wider instability throughout Libya."

The battle for control of Tripoli International Airport is the latest eruption in a rivalry among bands of ex-fighters who once battled side by side against Gaddafi. Since then, they have turned against each other in the scramble for control.

Since the 2011 fall of Tripoli, fighters from the western town of Zintan and allies have controlled the area including the international airport, while rivals loyal to the port city of Misrata entrenched themselves in other parts of the capital.

SENSITIVE ISSUE
The State Department spokeswoman said embassy staff would return to Tripoli once it was deemed safe. Until then, embassy operations would be conducted from elsewhere in the region and Washington. Security in Libya is an especially sensitive subject for the United States because of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, in which militants killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The attack also brought political fallout for President Barack Obama, with Republicans saying his administration did not provide sufficient overall security, did not respond quickly to the attack and then tried to cover up its shortcomings.

Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told CNN on Saturday the administration needed to get "more engaged on the ground with the factions in Libya" to help bring the violence under control.

"I think they're on the right track (now) but late into the game in terms of trying to bring factions together and use U.S. leverage in order to try to work this out," Royce said.

A Libyan militant suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, was captured in Libya last month and brought to the United States. He has pleaded not guilty.

But three years after Gaddafi's demise, Libya's transition to democracy is faltering, and its fragile government and nascent armed forces are unable to impose authority over the brigades of former fighters.

Many ex-fighters on the government payroll as semi-official security forces, but often pay little heed to the central government, each brigade claiming to be a legitimate force and the successors of the 2011 revolution.

Heavily armed, they have sided with competing political forces vying to shape the future of Libya in the messy steps since the end of Gaddafi's four-decade rule.

Libya's Western partners fear the OPEC oil-producing country is becoming increasingly polarized between two main groupings of competing militia brigades and their political allies.

One side is grouped around Zintan and their Tripoli allies, the Qaaqaa and al-Sawaiq brigades, which are loosely tied to the National Forces Alliance political movement in the parliament.

Opposing them is a faction centered around the more Islamist-leaning Misrata brigades and allied militias who side with the Justice and Construction Party, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

(GNN)(Reuters)(AIP)(Additional reporting by Bill Trott and Phil Stewart in Washington, Arshad Mohammed in Paris; Editing by Gareth Jones, David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker)

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