Violence flares in Tunisia as early election results revealed

MOBS pelted police with stones and Molotov cocktails, before setting fire to three buildings including the police station in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia yesterday.

They were prevented from torching another by shots fired in the air by the Tunisian army but appeared in control of the town despite the imposition of a 7pm curfew.

The town is the birthplace of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution and the Arab Spring.

Trouble broke out on Thursday night as the electoral commission annulled several seats of the al Aridah (Progressive List) party after receiving about 3,000 complaints of electoral irregularities.

The party’s president, Hechmi Hamdi – a London-based businessman – is known to have been close to the ousted dictator Zine al Abidine Ben Ali. “He does not hide this fact,” Said Ferjani, a senior party official of Ennadha – whose office in Sidi Bouzid was partially burned down in the unrest – told The Scotsman.

Ennadha’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, also accused elements of the former regime ofbeing behind the clashes.

The violence followed the official preliminary results of the election – the first of the Arab Spring – which gave Ennadha 90 seats in the new assembly, with 40 seats to independents, 30 to the Congress for the Republic, 21 for Ekkatakol, 19 for al Aridah and 17 for the Popular Democratic Pole. Mr Hamdi’s TV channel later declared that all the al Aridah candidates would be giving up their seats.