On May 9, 2023, Wissam Khazri, a 30-year-old national guardsman, killed five people in a mass shooting at the El Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. Khazri initially killed a colleague and seized his ammunition before targeting the synagogue, where a large gathering of Jewish pilgrims were celebrating Lag BaOmer. Two visitors and two Tunisian police officers were killed, while eight others sustained injuries before the perpetrator was killed by the police.
Tunisian Interior Minister Kamel Fekih reported that authorities had determined Khazri had targeted the synagogue in a premeditated attack, but they had not identified a motive.
Background
The El Ghriba Synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba is Africa's oldest synagogue and the site of an annual pilgrimage that attracts thousands of Jewish visitors from Europe and Israel. The synagogue has been targeted by Islamist militants and has previously experienced attacks. In 1985, three people were killed and 11 wounded during the festival of Simchat Torah when a local policeman responsible for guarding the synagogue fired into a crowd of Jews. In 2002, al-Qaeda militants attacked the synagogue with a truck bomb, resulting in the deaths of 21 people. Since then, the number of pilgrims has not reached 10,000 attendants as it once did. Security measures have been put in place to prevent such attacks and the pilgrimage is seen as an annual test for Tunisian security forces. Tunisia has a sizeable Jewish community of around 1,800 members, with hundreds in Djerba. The country's last major attack took place in 2020 when an explosion outside the US embassy killed one security officer.
Attack
At around 7 PM, 30-year-old Wissam Khazri, a member of the Tunisian National Guard, fatally shot his colleague with a pistol at the naval center in Aghir. Armed with an automatic weapon and his colleague's ammunition, he headed towards the synagogue located roughly 20 km from the center. He arrived on a quad bike wearing body armor and parked the bike in a schoolyard about 200 meters away from the synagogue, which contained a few hundred worshipers at the time as festivities for the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer were concluding. As he moved away from the schoolyard, and after monitoring the movements of a traffic police vehicle parked nearby, he opened fire indiscriminately at security units at around 8:13 PM, killing two worshipers who attempted to hide behind a nearby bus, as well as two police officers. He was immediately surrounded by security forces and shot dead before he could reach the entrance of synagogue, which was subsequently locked down. According to the interior minister, the gunman was killed two minutes after his arrival. Most tourists had already left the synagogue at the time of the shooting. According to organizers, more than 5,000 people were participating in this 2023's pilgrimage.
The victims were identified as cousins — a 30-year-old man of Israeli-Tunisian descent, who worked as a local goldsmith, and a 42-year-old man of French-Tunisian heritage, who had come to partake in the celebrations of the pilgrimage. They died at the scene, as did one of the police officers, while a second police officer succumbed to his injuries later in the hospital. The Ministry of the Interior reported four civilians and four officers injured, including one hospitalized in critical condition.
Tunisian authorities stated that the attack was premeditated and targeted the synagogue, but gave no explanation for his motives. Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who specializes in analyzing Islamist extremism in Tunisia, noted that the attack appeared to be an isolated incident and lacked the same level of organization as the 2002 attack on the synagogue. According to him, the attack was not sophisticated, and there is a possibility that it was carried out by a lone individual without a broader plot or planning.