Violent protests erupt across Tunisia, demonstrators errect barricades




Furious protesters on Wednesday erected barricades in central Tunis and hurled rocks at police who tried to disperse them with tear gas in new clashes after the assassination of a prominent opposition figure.

A National Guard tank fired rounds of tear gas at the young protesters, who used bins, coffee tables, barbed wire and barriers to build the barricades on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the epicenter of Tunisia’s revolution two years ago.

Police also clashed with protesters outside Tunisia's Interior Ministry where thousands had gathered, as hundreds of mourners accompanied an ambulance carrying the body of Chokri Belaid.

Protesters threw rocks at the police who responded by firing tear gas and using batons in a bid to disperse the crowd on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, in central Tunis, an AFP journalist reported.

Crowds of mourners, chanting "the people want the fall of the regime", crowded around an ambulance carrying the body of Chokri Belaid, an outspoken opponent of the government who was shot dead outside his Tunis home on Wednesday morning.

The murder prompted President Moncef Marzouki to cut short a foreign tour, one of his advisers Ghassen Dridi told AFP, as the presidency urged “restraint and wisdom.”



Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali denounced the murder as an “act of terrorism” while the presidency in a statement dubbed it an “odious” crime designed to “lead the Tunisian people to violence.”

Thousands of protesters gathered in Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the Arab Spring uprisings, and in other cities to protest Chokri’s killing, while others torched the offices of the ruling Islamist Ennhada party nationwide, according to the interior minister.

“More than four thousand are protesting now, burning tyres and throwing stones at the police,” Mehdi Horchani, a Sidi Bouzid resident, told Reuters. “There is great anger.”

Tunisians rose up against long-time leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in Sidi Bouzid in late 2010.

International reactions


French President Francois Hollande condemned the shooting of Belaid, saying he was concerned by the rise of violence in France’s former colony.

“This murder deprives Tunisia of one of its most courageous and free voices,” Hollande’s office said in a statement.

“France is concerned by the mounting political violence in Tunisia and calls for the ideas cherished by the Tunisian people during their revolution to be respected,” the statement said.

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