World

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.