The attacker killed two visitors to the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba and a guard before being shot dead.
Two visitors, a guard and their attacker have been killed near a synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, which draws hundreds of Jews from Europe and Israel each year on an annual pilgrimage.
Djerba – a holiday destination off the coast of southern Tunisia, 500km (300 miles) from the capital Tunis – is home to Africa’s oldest synagogue and the annual pilgrim has been under tight security since al-Qaeda attacked the religious site in 2002 with a truck bomb that killed 21 western tourists.
Tuesday’s attack was organized by a security guard attached to the Tunisian National Guard naval center in the town of Aghir on Djerba. .
The attacker fired indiscriminately at security units near the synagogue, killing two visitors and a security officer, as well as wounding five guards and four visitors.
Security forces then shot and killed the attacker, the Interior Ministry said. The injured include six members of the security forces and four civilians, the ministry said.
The Tunisian foreign ministry said one of the killed visitors was French and a Tunisian.
The sound of gunfire in the synagogue had led to panic among the hundreds of pilgrims, according to local media.
“The Ministry of Interior confirms that the temple has been cordoned off and…everyone inside and outside the temple has been secured, and further investigations are underway into the reasons for this insidious and cowardly attack,” the ministry said in a statement.
According to organizers, more than 5,000 Jewish worshipers, mostly from abroad, took part in this year’s pilgrimage to Ghriba, which resumed in 2022 after two years of pandemic-related suspension.
Tunisia has no diplomatic ties with Israel, but Israelis are allowed to enter the country as part of organized trips to the island for the pilgrimage.
Tunisia, primarily Muslim, is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in North Africa. Although they now number less than 1,800 people, Jews have lived in Tunisia since Roman times.
Gunmen killed dozens of foreign tourists in two separate attacks on a beach resort and a museum in Tunis in 2015.
Tunisia’s last major security incident was an explosion targeting police outside the US embassy in 2020 that killed an officer. Two suicide bombings targeted police outside the French embassy in 2019, also killing an officer.
The US ambassador to Tunisia had visited the synagogue with the US envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism on Monday, according to a US embassy post on Twitter.