Following massive border clashes near Ben Guerdane in March 2016, the activity of the IS group was described as an armed insurgency,[24] switching from previous tactics of sporadic suicide attacks to attempts to gain territorial control.

In the meanwhile, on 11 April 2002 a suspected al-Qaeda deadly bombing attack was carried in the Algeria's neighbour country Tunisia, on the island of Djerba.

However, the Tunisian government blamed a local splinter group of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), called the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, for the attack.

[35] On 26 June 2015 an Islamist mass shooting attack occurred at the tourist resort at Port El Kantaoui, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of the City of Sousse, Tunisia.

[38] On 24 November a bus carrying Tunisian Presidential Guards exploded, killing twelve, on a principal road in Tunis, Tunisia.

[11] On 19 March two militants were killed on the Libyan border, near to the site of the Ben Guerdane attack, while three civilians and a Tunisian security forces member were wounded.

[47] The first explosion on Thursday involved a suicide bomber who targeted a police patrol on Tunis's central Charles de Gaulle Street.

[47] Two weeks later, a video shared by IS supporters online on July 16 showed armed men purportedly in Kairouan, central Tunisia, proclaiming their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and urging people to conduct terror attacks in the country.

[48] On the first day of campaigning for the 2019 Tunisian presidential election on September 2, three senior militants and the head of the local National Guard Center were killed in a shootout in the Kef mountains near the town of Haidra.

[49] On September 6, A Tunisian National Guard officer was stabbed to death and another was wounded in Sousse, Tunisia, by three militants who were then each fatally shot during a firefight with security forces.

[50] On March 11, The Ministry of Defense reported that an IED exploded inside a closed military zone in Salloum Heights, killing 2 children and wounding their mother.

Separately, it was also announced that in the summer of that year, the UK would provide three specialist month-long training courses to the Tunisia National Guard Commando, to help them deal with internal and external threats.

[55] In October 2016, Defence Secretary Fallon announced that a Short Term Training Team of around 40 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Brigade deployed to the country to train 200 Tunisian troops in theoretical and practical exercises on Operational Planning, Intelligence and Surveillance and mobile patrolling, which would help Tunisia counter illegal cross-border movement, particularly from Libya.