Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi resigned yesterday and was replaced by Beji Caid Essebsi, a former minister, after anti-government protests left five people dead over the weekend.
Security forces again clashed with protesters in Tunis demanding the removal of some ministers of Mr Ghannouchi’s interim government before the premier announced his resignation.
“The acts of violence and looting, the unrest and the fires on Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis on Saturday 26 have left five people dead,” said a ministry statement quoted by TAP news agency.
“These human losses happened during the clashes” with “interior security forces which tried to push back a group of young people armed with knives and stones that tried to storm the interior ministry headquarters”.
The statement said 16 security officers were wounded by stones and other objects.
An investigation is underway to shed light on the circumstances of the deaths and injuries, it added.
The ministry said the “acts committed by these agitators, who do not want Tunisia to be stable and to overcome these exceptional times (were) serious”.
Mr Ghannouchi earlier said he decided to quit after just over six weeks as interim prime minister but was “not running away from responsibility”.
“I am not ready to be the person who takes decisions that would end up causing casualties,” Mr Ghannouchi said.
“This resignation will serve Tunisia, and the revolution and the future of Tunisia,” he added.
Interim President Foued Mebazaa appointed Caid Essebsi, 84, to succeed Mr Ghannouchi who is 69.
“I proposed Beji Caid Essebsi for the position of prime minister, and he has accepted the responsibility,” said Mr Mebazaa in a statement sent to local media.
Caid Essebsi “is known for his patriotism, his faithfulness and his abnegation for the benefit of the fatherland”, said the president.
He thanked Mr Ghannouchi for serving Tunisia in difficult times after hardline president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s flight to Saudi Arabia in mid-January.
Considered a liberal, Caid Essebsi held several ministerial posts under Ben Ali’s predecessor Habib Bourguiba who had led Tunisia to independence from France. He was defence and foreign minister and speaker of parliament.
Yesterday police fired tear gas and warning shots on the capital’s central Habib Bourguiba avenue to disperse stone-throwing youths on a third day of violence.
Security forces acted to stop protesters, who were chanting anti-government slogans, from reaching the interior ministry, AFP reporters said.
Rampaging youths hurled rocks at buildings to break the windows and threw up barricades to impede the police who were not able to disperse them.
In the protests demonstrators demanded the removal from the interim government of members of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose toppling on January 14 after weeks of demonstrations sparked similar uprising across the Arab world.
More than 100 people were arrested for involvement in the unrest on Saturday and 88 people after a demonstration on Friday, the ministry said, blaming the violence on “agitators” it said had infiltrated peaceful demonstrators.
The ministry also said that these agitators had used young highschool students as “human shields to commit acts of violence, arson to spread terror among the population and targeting the security forces”.