Tunisian police blocking the road after the explosion of a bus transporting Tunisia's presidential guard in central Tunis on November 24, 2015. (Photo: AFP)
Tunisian authorities have arrested two men for planning suicide attacks, the interior ministry said Friday, after the bombing of a busload of presidential guards in the capital killed 12.
"Following a thorough investigation, the national unit for terrorist crime investigation identified and arrested two takfiris (extremists)," a statement said, without saying when or where the detentions took place.
The pair, who were not identified, "intended to carry out two suicide attacks, one on Habib Bourguiba Avenue," the principal thoroughfare in the capital.
The statement said they had been "radicalised by the fugitive terrorist Walid (Ben Mohamed) Yousfi."
Last week, Tunisia identified three suspects wanted over the November 24 suicide bombing that killed the presidential guards in the centre of Tunis.
They were Yousfi and twin brothers Hassan Ben Khalifa Bouchiba and Houcine Ben Khalifa Bouchiba.
The bombing was claimed by ISIS group, and authorities identified the bomber as 26-year-old Tunisian travelling salesman Houssam Abdelli.
The interior ministry said Saturday it had carried out hundreds of searches and arrested dozens of people since the attack.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for two attacks earlier this year at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis and on a hotel near the Mediterranean resort of Sousse that killed a total of 60 people, all but one of them foreign tourists.
Tunisia, the cradle of the Arab Spring uprisings, has been plagued by Islamist violence since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
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