STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.

Suicide bombers wound 5 police in Tunisian capital

Mar 6, 2020 | 5:58 AM

TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisia’s interior ministry says two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the U.S. Embassy in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, Friday, wounding five police officers.

A ministry statement said the attackers both died. A civilian was slightly injured.

Media reports citing eyewitnesses said the attackers were on a motorcycle. That report could not be immediately confirmed.

Phones at the embassy went unanswered.

Police taped off the area around the blast site, which was littered with debris. The flag of the United States could be seen fluttering in the background.

Dozens of people have been killed in multiple attacks by Islamic extremists in Tunisia, notably in 2015 when the famed Bardo Museum outside the capital and a luxury beach hotel were attacked.

The U.S. Embassy, located in a residential area on the outskirts of Tunis, was attacked in 2012 by crowds angered by an anti-Muslim film produced in the United States. Since the fall of Tunisia’s hard-line secular dictatorship in January 2011, Salafists have come into the open.

The Associated Press