Tunis : Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Tunisia’s capital on Sunday to participate in an anti-terror march denouncing the deadly attack on a city museum that claimed 22 lives earlier this month, a media report said.
Chanting “Tunisia is free! Terrorism out!”, the marchers reached the Bardo Museum in Tunis, where the terrorist attack took place on March 18. French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and other world leaders were present at the museum to attend a ceremony, BBC reported.
A stone tablet was dedicated to the memory of the attack victims.
Earlier in the day, authorities said the alleged mastermind of the attack, Lokman Abu Sakhra, was killed in an anti-terrorist operation.
Two armed terrorists stormed the Bardo museum in Tunis and killed 17 tourists from Japan, Italy, Colombia, Australia, France, Poland and Spain, according to officials. Two Tunisians, one of them a police officer, were also killed.
Security forces killed the two gunmen believed to have been trained by the Islamic State (IS) militants in Libya. The IS owned responsibility for the attack on the museum, which is next to the country’s parliament.
Another man, an Algerian, was killed by security forces in Gafsa province in connection with the March 18 attack.
Authorities said the militants were members of the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, a jihadi group that had previously carried out deadly attacks against security forces in the North African country.