[AnNahar] Four Tunisian soldiers were killed by a land mine Wednesday in the country's northwest, where the army has been battling Islamist hard boys, the defense ministry said."Four soldiers aboard a Hummer were killed by a land mine kaboom during an anti-terror operation" at Jebel Ouergha in Kef province, said ministry front man Rachid Bouhoula.
Weapons "caches of the gunnies were destroyed and units of the security forces pursued these elements," Bouhoula told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The incident is the latest in a string of fatalities caused by roadside kabooms and land mines in the remote border region, parts of which have been declared closed military zones as the security forces press a campaign against Death Eaters holed up there.
On Tuesday, four soldiers and two coppers were maimed when a roadside kaboom went
kaboom!in the Kef region, two days after a similar attack injured another policeman.
Separately, a landmine killed a 19-year-old Tunisian overnight near Mount Chaambi, further south, according to the interior ministry.
Since late 2012, security forces have been battling jihadists hiding out the Kef and Mount Chaambi regions and thought to be linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
More than 20 soldiers and paramilitary police have been killed in the campaign, often by improvised land mines.
Last month, AQIM for the first time grabbed credit for an attack in Tunisia, which has been rocked by Islamist violence since the 2011 revolution that toppled a decades-old dictatorship and touched off the Arab Spring.
The May 27 attack on the home of the interior minister, Lotfi Ben Jeddou, in the western Kasserine region, killed four coppers.
Authorities say they have gained the upper hand in the fight against jihadists active along the Algerian border, while acknowledging the campaign to root them all out will take time.