{"id":15743,"date":"2014-08-06T09:45:02","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T09:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/tunisia-to-buy-us-attack-helicopters\/"},"modified":"2014-08-06T09:44:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T09:44:40","slug":"tunisia-to-buy-us-attack-helicopters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/tunisia-to-buy-us-attack-helicopters\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisia to Buy US Attack Helicopters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

{{The US is planning to sell Tunisia a dozen advanced attack helicopters as it seeks to help the North African country confront a mounting threat from armed groups.}}<\/p>\n

Moncef Marzouki , the Tunisian president, who is in Washington DC for a summit between US and African leaders, has described the purchase “a matter of urgency”.<\/p>\n

“We asked the United States to give us about 12 Black Hawks,” he said during a speech on Tuesday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n

“We badly need them now … we didn’t expect that Tunisia would become a country where [we] would have these terrorist attacks like in Syria.<\/p>\n

{{“We were a little bit naive.”}}<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is planning to sell Tunisia 12 UH-60M Black Hawks for a total estimated cost of $700m, according to a notice posted late last month by the Defence Security Cooperation Agency, a US government agency that manages arms sales.<\/p>\n

The aircraft would be equipped with Hellfire missiles, machine guns and other sophisticated military technology, according to the agency. However, the sale requires consent from the US Congress.<\/p>\n

Tunisia has faced attacks mounted by the al-Qaeda offshoot Ansar al-Sharia, as well as an influx of fighters and weapons unleashed by other conflicts in the region.<\/p>\n

Reporters from Tunis, said that there is strong public support to combat these fighters.<\/p>\n

Since April, thousands of troops have been deployed to Tunisia’s mountainous Chaambi region on the border with Algeria, where fighters fleeing a French military intervention in Mali last year have taken refuge.<\/p>\n

At least 15 soldiers have been killed in attacks on military checkpoints in the area.<\/p>\n

Tunisians are due to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections later this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

aljazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{The US is planning to sell Tunisia a dozen advanced attack helicopters as it seeks to help the North African country confront a mounting threat from armed groups.}} Moncef Marzouki , the Tunisian president, who is in Washington DC for a summit between US and African leaders, has described the purchase “a matter of urgency”. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-15743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053417,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15743.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15743"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=15743"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=15743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}