Army, police deploy near Tunisia hot spot

TUNIS: Tunisian troops and police deployed outside a flash point suburb of the capital yesterday, just days after a deadly attack by militants on national guards posts.
An AFP reporter saw army, police and national guard vehicles and several dozen men on roads leading to the Douar Hicher quarter of Manouba, but they had not entered the area, which was calm.
“These units have been deployed, just in case,” a security official said.
On Thursday night, an imam declared war on Tunisia’s ruling party during a television talk show, with the interior minister countering that such talk was responsible for blood being shed. “I am going to make war on these people because the interior minister and the leaders of Ennahda have chosen the United States as their god — it is the Americans who are writing the laws and the new constitution,” Nasreddine Aloui said in an appearance by video link on Ettounsiya television. He urged the country’s youth to prepare their burial shrouds to fight against Ennahda, brandishing a white cloth himself and saying Ennahda and other parties want elections held on the “ruins and the bodies of the Salafist movement.”