Tunisia dismantles cell recruiting women for militants

Tunisia said on Monday it has dismantled a cell in the northern region of Bizerte recruiting women to marry militants fighting abroad and has made four arrests.

The interior ministry said in a statement that anti-terrorist units led the operation to bust the “takfiri” radical Sunni Muslim network, without saying when the arrests took place.

The suspects had been “recruiting young people, especially girls, to send them to conflict zones for marriage to terrorist elements there,” it said.

Tunisian authorities have stepped up arrests since a Nov. 24 bomb attack on a bus in Tunis claimed by ISIS killed 12 presidential guards.

An estimated 6,000 Tunisians have travelled to Syria, Iraq and Libya to join jihadist organizations. Tunisia’s minister for women’s affairs, Samira Merai, has said that number includes around 700 women.