Thousands Protest Slaying of Secular Tunisian Politician

Second such assassination this year

Tunisian opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi was shot dead outside his home in Tunis on Thursday in the second such assassination this year, setting off mass protests against the Islamist-led government in the capital and elsewhere.

"He was shot in front of his house when he was with his disabled daughter," Mohamed Nabki, a member of Brahmi's secular, nationalist Popular Party, told Reuters. "The killers fled on a motorbike."

The assassination of another secular politician, Chokri Belaid, on February 6 ignited the worst violence in Tunisia since the 2011 fall of autocratic President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.