A policeman has been shot dead by two attackers on a motorbike on the outskirts of Sousse, the Tunisian coastal city where a jihadi gunman killed 38 tourists in June. Three officers were targeted in the shooting, one of whom was hit and later died, according to the Tunisian interior ministry.



The officers are believed to have been shot at with a rifle while they were waiting for transportation to the nearby town of Kairouan from the low-income neighbourhood of Hay Zohour.

Rafik Chelly, secretary of state for national security, said: “Unknown assailants fired on three policemen on a road. One of them was hit and died in hospital.” He added that an investigation was under way but was not able to clarify if the attack was the work of jihadi. An interior ministry spokesman said the two other policemen were unharmed, contrary to an earlier report from Wataniya-1 television.

The attack comes less than two months after a gunman killed 30 Britons and eight other foreign tourists at the Mediterranean resort of Port El Kantaoui in Sousse, an attack for which the Islamic State jihadi group claimed responsibility.

Counter-terrorism officers from Scotland Yard said earlier this month they had linked that attack by Seifeddine Rezgui with the March attack on the Bardo museum in the country’s capital, in which 21 tourists and a policeman were killed. Commander Richard Walton, head of Scotland Yark’s counter-terrorism command, said: “We are now linking evidentially the Bardo museum investigation in Tunisia, that attack, with the Sousse investigation. We have written to the coroner advising him of the connection between the two.”

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Tunisian authorities have arrested 159 people in relation to the 26 June shooting, with 15 charged with terrorism-related offences. The Tunisian president, Beji Caid Essebsi, decreed a state of emergency in the country after the incident, with Tunisia’s prime minister, Habib Essid, telling parliament: “We are engaged in a ferocious war against terrorism to protect lives and property, defend the republican regimes. We would not have felt obliged to decree the state of emergency if we were not convinced that our country was facing numerous terrorist plans to destabilise the country.”

Since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia has faced an upsurge in jihadiviolence that has cost the lives of dozens of soldiers and police. As many as 3,000 Tunisians are feared to have gone to Iraq, Syria and Libya to fight with militant groups, raising fears of returning jihadis plotting attacks on home soil.