Tunisia busts al-Qaeda recruitment network

Tunisian security forces have broken up a network that recruited fighters for Al-Qaeda in North Africa, the interior ministry said on Saturday. "A terrorist network which was responsible for recruiting radical Islamists and sending them to strongholds of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been dismantled," a ministry spokesman said, quoted by the official TAP news agency. Seven people were arrested and were to appear in court on Thursday. Two of them, detained one kilometre (0.62 miles) from the border with Algeria on December 6, confessed to being part of the network. The rest were arrested in the days that followed, and a gun was seized from one of them. Other members of the network were being sought in the region of Jendouba, in northwestern Tunisia. Security forces were also still hunting for gunmen who killed a policeman near the Algerian border on Monday, spokesman added. Clashes, strikes and attacks by hardline Islamists have multiplied across Tunisia in the run-up to the second anniversary of the start of Tunisia's revolution, which will be marked on Monday.