Tunisia Clashes after Police Arrest Jihadist Suspects

Tunisia police on Saturday arrested 10 suspected jihadists of the banned Ansar al-Sharia movement in the northeast of the country triggering clashes with their supporters, the interior ministry said.

The arrests took place at dawn in the town of Kef and hours later clashes erupted when supporters of the suspects hurled stones at a police station and set tyres ablaze in the area.

Police retaliated by firing tear gas to disperse the assailants, the ministry said without giving any casualty details.

Ansar al-Sharia is Tunisia's main Salafist movement which the authorities have designated a "terrorist organisation" with ties to al-Qaida.

Since the 2011 revolution that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has been rocked by violence blamed on radical Islamist groups who had been suppressed under the former dictator.

Islamists have been blamed for the assassinations this year of two opposition MPs and the murders have plunged the country into a protracted political crisis.

The opposition blames the government for failing to rein in the jihadists and has demanded the resignation of the cabinet which is headed by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda.

Ansar al-Sharia is led by Abu Iyadh, a former al-Qaida fighter in Afghanistan.

The group is accused of orchestrating a deadly attack on the US embassy in Tunis in September 2012, but it has repeatedly denied its involvement in that or other attacks.

Around 30 soldiers and policemen have been killed in clashes with jihadists this year, mostly in the Chaambi mountain region along the Algerian border where security forces have been tracking down Qaida-linked militants.