A women are seen in front of the Dubai airline Emirates office, at Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunis, Tunisia, December 25, 2017. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi
December 25, 2017
TUNIS (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates has information that Tunisian women or women traveling on Tunisian passports might commit “terrorist acts” in the Gulf country, Tunisia’s state news agency TAP said.
Tunisia late on Sunday suspended flights from Dubai carrier Emirates to Tunis, with officials saying the airline was refusing to carry female Tunisian travelers.
Emirates has given no reason for not allowing female Tunisians to board its flights since Friday.
A spokesman for Tunisia’s presidency did not elaborate on the security threat in a brief TAP article.
Emirates had stopped its Dubai-Tunis connection on Monday.
In Tunisia, anger has been building after women said they had been banned at Tunis airport from boarding Emirates flights to Dubai.
Tunisian civil organizations and political parties called on the government to respond. Foreign Minister Khemais Jhianoui told a local radio station the UAE should apologize for the travel ban, which he said its authorities had not informed Tunisia about.
(Reporting by Ulf Laessing, Tarek Amara, Mostafa Hashem and Maha El Dahan; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
