TUNIS – Tunisian police fired teargas late on Saturday to disperse violent protests in the southern town of Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the country's revolution and hometown of slain secular opposition figure Mohamed Brahmi, witnesses said. Tensions have run high in Tunisia since Brahmi's Thursday assassination, and large protests throughout the day were met with police teargas. In a bid to stave off unrest amid intensifying protests, particularly in the capital, secular coalition partners of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party said they were in talks to reach a new power-sharing deal. The spokesman for the Constituent Assembly, Tunisia's transitional parliament tasked with drafting a new constitution for the North African country of 11 million people, said he expected a deal in the coming hours. “The trend now is to move towards expanding the base of power,” Mufdi Al-Masady told a local radio station. The effort to reach a new deal by secular coalition partners of the ruling Ennahda party could help defuse increasingly hardline rhetoric on both sides. But so far, protests in the country have continued. In Sidi Bouzid, locals told Reuters that angry protesters threw rocks at police. “Hundreds of protesters lit tires on fire to block roads and they threw rocks at the police,” resident Mahdi Al-Horshani told Reuters by telephone. — Reuters
