TUNIS, June 5, 2011 (AFP)
Seven people have been killed and more than 100 injured in fierce tribal clashes in the southern Tunisian mining town of Metlaoui, authorities said Sunday.
The violence led local authorities to deploy additional security forces and to extend a curfew imposed Saturday on Metlaoui, where clashes between rival tribal factions began late Friday after an altercation between two youths.
The curfew will now run from 1500 GMT to 0500 GMT instead of from 1900 to 0400 GMT, interior ministry officials said.
The latest victims were a 30-year-old man knifed to death early Sunday and another who died of his injuries late Saturday, they added.
Saturday, a father and his son died after being attacked by men with knives and sticks, a day after two men and a woman where shot dead in the impoverished town in the Gafsa mining basin, 350 kilometers (217 miles) southwest of Tunis.
The two sides fought each other with hunting rifles, iron bars and firebombs and shops in the town were looted and burned down.
Since the fall of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, tribal tensions have flared in the area, which is reeling from high unemployment.
In March, a false employment offer allegedly posted by the GPC Gafsa phosphate company which imposed quotas on a tribal basis sparked disturbances.
The following month, two high school students were killed and 43 people hurt during violent clashes.
More than 1,000 people, mostly students, then fought each other with sticks, knives and stones outside a high school in the town of Sened, 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Gafsa, according to the interior ministry.
In 2008, the Ben Ali regime violently cracked down on strikers in the Gafsa basin after workers protested against massive layoffs by the GPC that cut the workforce from about 15,000 to 5,000 within a few months.
North Africa and the Middle East have been rocked by unrest since a revolt in Tunisia that began in December sparked similar protests in Egypt leading to the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak in February, weeks after Ben Ali fled his country.
