A young protester has died and at least 15 policemen injured, after Tunisian security forces clashed with Salafis. Police fired teargas and shots into the air to disperse the stone-throwing crowd, which gathered despite a ban.
Some 200 people have been arrested in the weekend clashes, Prime
Minister Ali Larayedh said in remarks published on Monday.
Violence broke out in the central city of Kairouan and in the capital, Tunis. Clashes in the Tunis suburb of Ettadhamen erupted between nearly 500 supporters of Ansar al-Sharia and law enforcement as protesters started throwing stones.
The Salafis were chanting, "The rule of the tyrant should
fall," according to Reuters.
Teargas was also reportedly used in Kairouan, as Salafis threw
stones at the police from behind the wall of a mosque.
Group’s spokesman Seifeddine Rais, the group's spokesman, was arrested at dawn on Sunday as he went jogging in front of police, according to a police source, who described his behavior as a "provocation," Al Jazeera reported.
According to local reports a young man, identified as a
supporter of Islamist group, died in the street clashes in
Ettadhamen.
Some 11 policemen and four protesters have been reported wounded
in clashes.
The annual rally was expected to have drawn up more than 40,000
people to attend this year's annual congress.
The recent protest that turned violent comes two days after the
government banned the Islamist group from holding its annual
congress in the central city of Kairouan.
On Friday the government ruled the group had "shown disdain for
state institutions" and was "a threat to public
security".
“The congress is postponed to another date undecided yet,”
Habib Al-Lawz, a leader from the ruling Ennahda party, told a local
Radio station on Saturday.
Despite the ban, the group vowed the meeting would take place,
but said they would gather at a different location, in an
impoverished suburb of Tunis instead of Kairouan, where security
forces were deployed in strength on Saturday.
On its Facebook page, Ansar al-Sharia notified its supporters the
congress has been moved to Ettadhamen.
Earlier, the movement told to stay away from Kairouan.
"To the attention of our brothers who are coming to Kairouan
from other regions... the head of Ansar al-Sharia informs you of
the need to cancel all these trips given the seriousness of the
security situation," the group said on its website.
As a precaution, there was a heavy police presence at tollbooths
along the main highway from the capital to the central city of
Kairouan.
Police stopped private minibuses traveling between Tunisian towns,
with special attention paid to men with beards, as sported by
Salafis.
Police checkpoints have been set up around the city with special
units monitoring the square facing the mosque which is the venue
for the congress. Helicopters have been also hovering over the
area.
"We have taken all measures to ensure the meeting does not go
ahead... We will not allow those coming for this congress to enter
the city," AFP quoted an unmanned policeman as saying.
Around 11,000 police officers and soldiers blocked an annual
conference in Kairouan.