On 23 December 2006 and 3 January 2007, Tunisian security forces engaged in clashes with members of a group with connections to the Islamist terror group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in the towns of Soliman and Hammam-Lif south of the capital Tunis, killing more than a dozen people.[1][2]
On 23 December, two Islamists were killed and two arrested in a shootout with police in the town of Hammam-Lif south of Tunis.[3]
On 3 January, at least two members of Tunisian security forces and twelve Islamists were killed, and fifteen arrested in a clash in a forested area near Soliman.[3][4]
Among those killed was the leader of the group, Lassaad Sassi, a former Tunisian policeman who had spent time in Afghanistan and headed a terror network based in Milan, Italy. Sassi's group had reportedly established training camps in the mountains in Djebel Ressas and Boukornine south of the Tunisian capital.[5]
According to French daily Le Parisien at least 60 people were killed in the clashes.[1] It was later revealed that the Islamists had been in possession of blueprints of foreign embassies as possible targets.[3][4] The attacks were the most serious by Islamists in Tunisia since the Ghriba synagogue bombing in 2002.[1]