The raid destroyed a local fleet of western ships built by French privateer Zymen Danseker, who had planned to use it to spread Barbary pirate activity to the Spanish territories in America.

[2] Obtaining emergency resources from the Parliament of Messina to deal with the threat as quickly as possible,[3] Osuna called up captain Antonio Pimentel, as well as Hernando de Aledo, a veteran of the Eighty Years' War experienced in amphibious warfare,[4] and planned for them to infiltrate Tunisia with a contingent of the Spanish Marine Infantry and destroy Danser's armada.

[3] They silently approached Danser's armada in the lake of Tunis, and after identifying three of the ten ships as loaded with booty from previous captures,[5] they employed incendiary devices to set the other seven on fire.

[2] Away from Tunisia, Pimentel contacted a squad of seven galleys of Naples commanded by Álvaro de Bazán y Benavides, who was on an identical mission to destroy Tunisian shipyards and armories recently built in Bizerte.

Deciding not to return to Sicily without helping Bazán, Pimentel joined him with his fleet and attacked Bizerte in a two-pronged assault, sacking the city, destroying the targets and setting the place on fire.