Tunisian leader flees amid protests; PM takes over

As the prime minister stepped in until promised elections can be held, Ben Ali's whereabouts were unclear. Al Jazeera television said he had left the country.
In a television address in Tunis, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi said he was taking over as president and would remain as caretaker leader until early elections.
"Since the president is temporarily unable to exercise his duties, it has been decided that the prime minister will exercise temporarily the duties," he said.
"I call on the sons and daughters of Tunisia, of all political and intellectual persuasions, to unite to allow our beloved country to overcome this difficult period and to return to stability."
Tunisians in the Gulf generally welcomed the veteran leader's departure.
The latest unrest was sparked when police prevented an unemployed graduate from selling fruit without a license and he set fire to himself, dying shortly afterward of his burns.
In power since 1987, Ben Ali had earlier Friday declared a state of emergency and said protesters would be shot in an increasingly violent confrontation. He had dismissed the government and called an early parliamentary election.
As the violence escalated, police fired tear gas to disperse crowds in central Tunis demanding his immediate resignation. They were not satisfied with his promise on Thursday to step down at the end of his current term in 2014.
Opposition leader Najib Chebbi, one of Ben Ali's most outspoken critics, described the events as a "regime change".
"This is a crucial moment. There is a change of regime under way. Now it's the succession," he told France's I-Tele TV. "It must lead to profound reforms, to reform the law and let the people choose."
The White House said Tunisians should have the right to choose their own leader. It was monitoring developments in Tunisia and called on authorities there to respect human rights.
"We condemn the ongoing violence against civilians in Tunisia, and call on the Tunisian authorities to fulfill the important commitments ... including respect for basic human rights and a process of much-needed political reform," White House spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.
There were no reports of Saudis being caught up in the unrest, a statement by the Saudi Embassy in Tunis said. The embassy has opened an operations room to advise Saudi citizens in Tunisia and to ensure their safety. The operations room is operating around the clock under the supervision of Ambassador Abdullah Muammar, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Western countries urged their people to avoid travel to the popular tourist destination due to the instability. Holiday operator Thomas Cook said it is evacuating around 1,800 British and Irish tourists and 2,000 Germans from Tunisia.
"Although there have been no specific problems for our holidaymakers, their well-being is our primary concern so, as a precaution, we've taken the decision to bring them back to the UK as soon as we can, using our fleet of aircraft today," Thomas Cook said in a statement.
Thomas Cook said its next planned departures for Tunisia, which were due to take place Sunday, had been canceled following advice from the Foreign Office.
Medical sources and a witness said 12 people died in clashes on Thursday night in Tunis and the northeastern town of Ras Jebel. Before the latest casualties, the official death toll in almost a month of violence was 23. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said it had a list of at least 66 people killed.
Tunisia's ambassador to UNESCO resigned in protest at Ben Ali's bloody crackdown. He said he could no longer defend Tunisian state repression of demonstrators as an ambassador to the UN cultural body.
A Reuters photographer saw people looting two big supermarkets in the Tunis suburb of Enkhilet, about 10 km from the capital. He said they had set fire to the local police station. On almost every block in suburban Tunis, people were standing on the street with baseball bats to protect their cars and homes from damage by looters.
Tunisians in Saudi Arabia expressed happiness at Ben Ali's departure.
"Thank God he is finally out," said Yesmine Belhassen, a Jeddah-based public relations consultant. "Under Ben Ali, our country was only getting deeper and deeper into a political and social quagmire."
According to Belhassen, Tunisians had reached a point of no return. "My country-folk realized there was no way out but to force him out. Ben Ali was the problem. He created a mess of our beautiful country. He thought the security apparatus that he created around him would save him. Well, in the face of public wrath, nothing can stand," she said.
Riyadh-based Tunisian teacher Ibrahim Lotfi was also delighted. "This man abused his all-encompassing powers, wrecked our economy; unemployment has reached stratospheric levels. He had to go or else he would have met a fate far worse than that of Nicolae Ceausescu," he said, referring to the 1989 lynching of the Romanian dictator.
Lotfi said the real trouble for Ben Ali started the moment he divorced his first wife in 1987.
"He lost people's trust and respect. It was his first wife, a daughter of a prominent and respected Tunisian general, who pushed Ben Ali into politics and prominence. He divorced her just after he became the president and married a much younger woman after dating her," said Lotfi. "He would not have married her but she became pregnant during their dating and Ben Ali had no choice but to marry her."
Lotfi said Tunisian laws ban polygamy.
"So Ben Ali had to divorce the first wife and marry this scheming daughter of a hairdresser. Things never looked up after that fatal decision," he said. "The army did not like him. They respected him because of his marriage to the daughter of one of their most respected generals. The new wife took full advantage of the situation and created a mafia. They looted the exchequer and corruption became the order of the day."
For Ali Mohammed, a Manama-based Tunisian teacher, the developments in Tunisia were as fast as unexpected and the departure of the former president was not on the agenda of anyone.
"Nobody in December ever thought that a heated argument between a man selling vegetables and fruits off his cart and a woman working for the local municipality in Sidi Bouzid would develop into angry street demonstrations and eventually clashes with the police," he said.
"However, people were obviously very upset and wanted to express their anger and convey their frustrations. It is unfortunate that many people died in the clashes and many people lost their businesses because of the arson attacks, but thank God, their number was limited," said the teacher who has been away from his home country for four years, but regularly spent his summer holidays there with his family.
Ali is hopeful that the new situation will now usher in a period of stability and better relations between the authorities and the people.