TUNIS/MUSCAT/MANAMA – Tunisian Prime Minister Muhammad Ghannouchi resigned on Sunday, as security forces clashed with protesters in Tunis demanding the removal of some ministers of his interim government. “I have decided to quit as prime minister,” Ghannouchi told a news conference, saying that he thought carefully before taking the decision which was supported by his family.
“I am not running away from responsibility. This is to open the way for a new prime minister. I am not ready to be the person who takes decisions that would end up causing casualties. This resignation will serve Tunisia, and the revolution and the future of Tunisia,” he added. 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. 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. Omani police fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing demonstrators demanding political reform, killing two people, and protesters set government buildings and cars ablaze, witnesses said.
The trouble in the industrial town of Sohar was a rare sign of discontent in the normally sleepy Gulf Arab sultanate and followed a wave of pro-democracy protests across the Arab world. The witnesses said more than 2,000 protesters had gathered for a second day in a square in Sohar, on the north coast, before police tried to disperse them, first with tear gas and batons and then rubber bullets.
“Two people have died after police fired rubber bullets into the crowd,” one witness, who declined to be named, told Reuters from Sohar. Also on Sunday, thousands of Bahrainis marched in Manama calling for the fall of the ruling Sunni dynasty, as 18 opposition MPs submitted their resignation to protest the killing of demonstrators.
The throng of protesters set out from Pearl Square, which has become the epi-centre of anti-government protests that began on February 14, marching onto a major highway. Demonstrators carrying a large banner that read, “The People Want to Topple the Regime” led the marching protesters, who chanted the same refrain.
The large flag-waving crowd wound its way down the highway to the Diplomatic Area, marching past the Kuwaiti and Saudi embassies and the Bahraini central bank.
