The United States has announced it will be giving Tunisia another $60 million in military aid next year, according to Reuters.
The head of the U.S. African command, Gen. David Rodriguez, said Tuesday during a visit to Tunisia that aid would be for training, mine detection, naval craft and counter-terrorism exercises with Tunisian troops, Reuters reported. Since 2011, the U.S. has given Tunisia $100 million in military aid.
Speaking after talks with Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said some of the money would go on equipment to detect improvised explosive devices, new boats and training, according to Reuters.
Rodriguez said the U.S. and Tunisia face a common terrorist threat in the form of al-Qaida linked organizations, Reuters reported.
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, according to Reuters.
Underscoring its concern about the security situation in the small North African state, Washington announced three weeks ago that it planned to sell Tunisia a dozen Black Hawk attack helicopters worth an estimated $700 million, according to Reuters.
In July, 15 Tunisian soldiers were killed by suspected al-Qaida militants near the Algerian border in the latest of a series of attacks by radicals, Reuters reported.
Protests in Tunisia in 2010 sparked subsequent revolutions that have transformed the Arab world and in many ways it is more stable and secure than other Arab Spring countries such as Libya, Egypt and Syria, according to Reuters.
