PHOTO – REUTERS

BERLIN – A 15-year-old German girl has died from injuries suffered in an explosion last week in front of a synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba, raising the death toll to 17, German officials said last Thursday. A hospital spokesman in the northern town of Luebeck said the girl had died from severe burns suffered in the explosion. A 33-year-old woman in the same hospital was still in „very critical condition“ as a result of the blast.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder expects a full investigation into the explosion outside North Africa‘s oldest synagogue that killed 11 German tourists. The probe is trying to determine if the blast was linked to recent violence in the Middle East. The German government believes the explosion of a tanker truck on the resort island was a deliberate attack on the synagogue. The Tunisian government maintains it was an accident and said it had no new information to suggest it was a suicide attack. Eleven Germans, five Tunisians and a Frenchman were killed. The truck driver was among the victims. About one million German tourists visit Tunisia each year.

Diplomats say the stakes are high for Tunisia, which positions itself as a haven of peace between the turmoil in the Middle East and a decade of violence in neighbouring Algeria. German Interior Minister Otto Schily said last Saturday that, based on the latest information both German and Tunisian governments had obtained, it appeared the blast had been planned. Reuters