TUNIS: Dozens of Islamists, some of them armed, took to the streets of the Tunisian capital yesterday after deadly clashes at night, but there was no sign of any additional security as stated by the authorities. A reporter said a crowd was gathered near the Ennour mosque in the Tunis suburb of Manouba, where the interior ministry said a radical Salafist militant was killed in Tuesday night’s clashes.
The government said earlier that police and soldiers had deployed heavily and would use all means to quell any unrest following the clashes sparked by the arrest of a Salafist suspected of assaulting a security official.
But there were no such forces on the visible on the ground, and Islamist militants -- some of them wielding knives -- said they were ready for more confrontations.
“We will not let yesterday’s murder pass without any reaction,” said one of them.
Militants attacked two national guard posts in the Tunis suburb of Manouba late on Tuesday after police arrested a Salafist suspected of assaulting the head of the area’s public security brigade, the interior ministry said.
The attacks were carried out by “a large number of people with radical religious tendencies,” ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche had said.
AFP
