Jobless Youths Attack Tunisia Police Post

Unemployed Tunisian youths ransacked an empty police post in the impoverished central region of Gafsa overnight and torched its contents, witnesses told Agence France Presse on Monday.

Tunisia remains prey to sometimes violent social unrest, especially in the neglected center of the country, three years after an impoverished street vendor set himself on fire in a desperate act of protest that sparked the first Arab Spring uprising.

The latest incident took place during a protest by a group of young Tunisians in the town of El Guettar against the results of a recruitment process by a public company.

They took advantage of the absence of security forces at the police post to attack it and burn the equipment they found in the street.

The protesters, who had failed to secure jobs at the company, had already blocked access to the town on Saturday before being dispersed by police.

The interior ministry has given no details of the incident in El Guettar.

But the Gafsa region has witnessed strikes and violent protests in recent months, with demonstrators torching the local headquarters of the ruling Islamist party Ennahda last November after trying to break into the governor's office.

The unrest on that occasion too was motivated by poverty and lack of development, which were driving factors behind the popular uprising that toppled veteran autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 and sparked revolutions across the region.