TUNIS — Tunisian police on Monday, Sept. 9, arrested a senior leader from a banned Islamist group and killed two other militants, during a raid near the capital Tunis, authorities said.

Tunisia’s government, led by moderate Ennahda Islamists, in coalition with two smaller secular parties, is under popular pressure to crack down on security threats posed by Islamist militants.

Abu Lyadh

Ennahda responded two weeks ago by declaring the banned group, Ansar al-Sharia, a terrorist organization, and blaming it for the assassination of two secular opposition leaders.

“Police killed two Ansar al-Sharia militants and arrested two senior officials in the group, including the group’s military commander, Mohammed al-Awadi, in Mornagia near Tunis,” a senior official in the Interior Ministry told Reuters.

Ansar al-Sharia is the most radical Islamist group to emerge in Tunisia since the 2011 uprising that ousted autocratic President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and triggered a wave of Arab Spring revolts.

Awadi is considered the group’s second in command in Ansar al-Sharia, after Saifallah Benahssine, known as Abu Iyadh, a former al-Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan sought by authorities on charges he incited an attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunis in 2012.