On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 17:55:43 +0100, Nightjar Other sources state that this was part of a continuing army operation
That part of the country had a fairly constant army presence, with ID checks on the road, when we were there a couple of years ago. Tunisia's big problem is not internal - the Arab Spring revolution was a success, and real democracy resulted for the first time since independence - but that it has a massively long border (much of it through desert) with Algeria, and the rest of the land border is with Libya.
Gafsa is a fairly poor and depressed part of the country - a lot of phosphate mining industry in the area, and it's a long way from anything that'll really drag package tourons from the coast.