Five security agents and four visitors were also injured in the attack. One of the security agents died of his injuries on Wednesday, Tunisian media reported.
Those slain included two visitors, a 30-year-old Tunisian and a 42-year-old French national, and three security officials, according to statements from the Tunisian Foreign Ministry. The ministry said Wednesday that the visitors killed were Jewish pilgrims.
Former tourism minister René Trabelsi, a prominent member of the Tunisian Jewish community who was at the synagogue at the time of the attack, told Tunisian radio that the slain visitors were Aviel Haddad and his French Tunisian cousin Benjamin Haddad, who had traveled from his home in Marseille, France, for the religious event. Aviel Haddad also held Israeli citizenship, Israeli media reported.
Aviel Haddad’s sister, Rona, told Israeli radio the family had immigrated to Israel from Tunisia, the Associated Press reported. Her brother, who was a jeweler, often visited Djerba.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen spoke with the chief rabbi of Tunis, Haim Bitan, to express Israel’s solidarity with the Jewish community in Tunisia and offer assistance, according to the AP. Tunisia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations.
Benjamin Haddad was a bakery owner, father of four and active member of the Jewish community in Marseille, Fabienne Bendayan, president of the Marseille regional chapter of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, said in a statement Wednesday.
Every year, Jewish worshipers travel to Djerba, home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Arab world. The island is also home to the 2,500-year-old Ghriba synagogue — Africa’s oldest.
Videos posted to social media, which The Washington Post was unable to verify, show chaotic scenes inside the synagogue as the attack unfolded outside.
Authorities did not identify the shooter or specify a motive. The Interior Ministry said Tuesday it was investigating “the reasons for this treacherous and cowardly attack.”
Fethi Bakkouche, a spokesman for the regional court, told Agence France-Presse that a preliminary criminal investigation was opened.
In a statement Wednesday, the Tunisian Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences to families of the victims of the “cowardly attack.”
“This attack on innocent people will only strengthen the unity of the country and its determination to continue its relentless resistance to all forms of crime and to defeat those behind it,” the statement said.
President Kais Saied convened a meeting of his national security council on Wednesday to discuss the shooting, for which he blamed “criminals” seeking to destabilize Tunisian society and disrupt tourism. He did not mention antisemitism or describe the shooting as terrorism — even though the increasingly authoritarian leader has before described political opponents as terrorists, without evidence.
“I would like to take this occasion also to reassure the Tunisian people and the whole world that Tunisia will remain safe,” he said in introductory remarks published on the presidency’s Facebook page.
Saied offered condolences to the families of those killed and wished the injured a full recovery.
אירוע חריג בבית כנסת בג’רבה | גורמים ישראלים: ירי בוצע לעבר המאבטחים שהוצבו במקום, אין דיווח על נפגעים באירוע • במקום שהו מאות אנשים בהילולת רבי שמעון בר יוחאי@AmichaiStein1 @kaisos1987 pic.twitter.com/c89iPbiAQe
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) May 9, 2023
Condolences and condemnation poured in from French officials, and the French Embassy opened a “crisis cell” Tuesday night to respond to the attack. The French Foreign Ministry decried the “odious act” in a statement Wednesday.
“We stand alongside Tunisia to continue the fight against antisemitism and all forms of fanaticism,” the ministry said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller condemned the attack Tuesday night in a statement on Twitter and praised the swift intervention of Tunisian security forces.
Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, wrote Wednesday on Twitter: “I am sickened and heartbroken by the lethal, antisemitic attack targeting the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba during the Lag B’Omer celebrations, with thousands of Jewish pilgrims in attendance.”
Lipstadt, along with Joey Hood, U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, had visited the synagogue the day before to open the pilgrimage celebration, according to a tweet by the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, the nation’s capital.
“This example of coexistence in Tunisia reinforces our shared commitment to multiculturalism and the protection of religious freedom,” the U.S. Embassy wrote.
In Tunisia, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians have lived side by side for centuries, pilgrims from around the world gathered on the island of Djerba last night for the annual Lag B’Omer celebration. Ambassador Joey Hood and visiting Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat… pic.twitter.com/6AqQPVNF8k
— U.S. Embassy Tunis (@usembassytunis) May 9, 2023
Tuesday’s shooting was the first major attack in the North African country since 2020, when a suicide blast outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis killed a security officer.
The attack comes as Tunisia is facing a major economic crisis, and it could auger trouble for the country’s tourism sector, a pillar of the economy. Tourism Minister Mohamed Moez Belhassine sought Wednesday to reassure visitors that the country was safe and that scheduled flights to Tunisia would continue as normal, state news agency TAP reported.
The Ghriba synagogue has been targeted before, in April 2002, when an attacker linked to al-Qaeda killed 21 people, mostly German tourists, by detonating a truck filled with explosives. The synagogue has since tightened security.
