Tunisia declares nationwide curfew for Friday

Interior Ministry spokesman Walid Louguini said the police officer was “fatally attacked” by the crowd as he tried to leave his auto.

Protests and clashes with security forces started in Kasserine on Saturday after the death of an unemployed man who was electrocuted on top of a power pole near the governor’s office.

Abdelghani Chaabani, the regional health authority, said that eight police were injured in Kasserine and another 11 in nearby Thala, while Reuters news agency reported that at least one officer had been killed in similar clashes in the town of Feriana.

Today, we believe that there may be another revolution because there are many things that have not changed since the revolution of 2011. “Security forces chased the protesters in the streets of the city and fired tear gas”, Hatem Salhi, a witness in Kasserine, told Reuters by telephone.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Thursday night, Wajdi Khadraoui, a Kasserine-based activist, said that protests were ongoing “in neighbourhoods throughout Kasserine”.

Tunisia has been held up as a model for democratic progress since the 2011 revolution that toppled Ben Ali.

His death was reminiscent of the December 17, 2010, self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi that sparked anti-government protests across Tunisia, which then spread across North Africa and the Middle East. Protesters are shouting out slogans demanding to provide them with jobs. Protesters chanted: “Work, freedom and dignity”, according to one resident. “We’re exhausted of broken promises”, said Yassine Kahlaoui, a 30-year-old jobseeker who was among more than 1,000 people gathered at the local government building in Kasserine.

There were further demonstrations on Friday in several regions, including Kasserine and Sidi Bouzid. But the head of a Tunisian non-governmental organisation said the government had been slow to respond even though the brewing unrest was predictable. “We reject the government’s decisions on the issue of employment made yesterday, as they were adopted in a hurry and do not meet our requirements”, a representative of unemployed university graduates, Wajji Hadraoui, said.