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Tunisia's Most Prominent Street Back to Normal a Day After Suicide Bombing


FILE - Tunisian police officers secure the site of an attack after a 30-year-old woman blew herself on the Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis, Tunisia, Oct. 29, 2018.
FILE - Tunisian police officers secure the site of an attack after a 30-year-old woman blew herself on the Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis, Tunisia, Oct. 29, 2018.

Shops and cafes in the center of the Tunisian capital reopened on Tuesday amid heightened security and crowds returned to the street where a suicide bomber wounded 10 police officers and five others a day earlier.

The bombing on Habib Bourguiba avenue was the first such violence in the capital since late 2015 when militants killed dozens of people in attacks that targeted the country's vital tourism sector.

"We will stay here and will continue to live normally... we will shake them off [extremists]," said Lamia Ben Omar, who was sitting with a friend in a cafe. Police cars increased patrols and officers searched some pedestrians, witnesses said.

A security source told Reuters the bomber detonated a grenade rather than an explosives belt. Her family said she was likely radicalized online.

Tunisia is one of the few Arab democracies and the only country to throw off an autocratic leader during the Arab Spring in 2011 without triggering large scale unrest or civil war.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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