Policeman killed as militants attack checkpoint in southern Tunisia

Tunis/Italy: Militants attacked a checkpoint in a town in southwest Tunisia early on Sunday, killing a policeman and wounding three others, security officials said.
Two militants were also killed in an exchange of fire during the attack in Kebili, which lies on the edge of Tunisia's southern desert region, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The attackers opened fire on a police patrol that had set up a checkpoint at a roundabout in the town, one security official said.
Security forces were combing the area to search for militants who may have escaped following the attack, a second official said.
Tunisia has been trying to tackle a militant threat after suffering major attacks by Islamist militants in 2015 and early 2016, including deadly assaults on tourists at a museum in Tunis and on a beach in Sousse.
Militants occasionally target patrols and checkpoints, but attacks in towns and cities are rare. Sunday's was the first in an urban area since a bomb attack against a bus carrying presidential guards in Tunis in November 2015.
Meanwhile, Italy has expelled a Tunisian who may have had links with the man who killed 12 people in Berlin when he plowed a truck through a busy Christmas market, the Italian interior ministry said on Sunday.
The Tunisian, a resident of Latina near Rome, was identified in investigations launched in the wake of the December 19 Berlin attack, the ministry said in a statement.
The 37-year old man was the owner of a telephone whose number was found among the contacts of Anis Amri, it said.
Amri killed 12 people when he plowed a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin. He was killed in a shootout with police near Milan on December 23.
Amri came to Italy by boat in 2011 and spent almost four years in jail there before being ordered out of the country in 2015.
The expelled Tunisian's phone number was also linked to a Facebook profile pointing to his support of militant ideology and connections with people supporting IS, the ministry said.
The ministry said Italy had expelled 153 people suspected of religious extremism since January 2015.