Amid the political instability, looters emptied shops and torched the capital’s main train station, and soldiers traded fire with assailants in front of the Interior Ministry in Tunis. At least 42 people were killed Saturday in a prison fire in a resort town and the director of another prison let 1,000 inmates flee after a deadly rebellion.
The interim president — Fouad Mebazaa, the former president of the lower house of parliament — ordered the creation of a unity government that could include the opposition, which had been frozen out and ignored under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23 years of autocratic rule.
Ben Ali abruptly fled the country Friday for Saudi Arabia following a month of street protests over corruption, a lack of jobs and clampdowns on civil liberties. Yet while the protests were mostly peaceful, the first day after his departure was chaotic — and deadly.
The leadership changes came at a dizzying speed. After Ben Ali left, his longtime ally, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, stepped in briefly with a vague assumption of power that left open the possibility that Ben Ali could return. But on Saturday, Constitutional Council President Fethi Abdennadher declared the president’s departure permanent and gave lawmaker Mebazaa 60 days in which to organize new elections.
Hours later, Mebazaa was sworn in.
In his first televised address, he said he asked the premier to form a “national unity government in the country’s best interests” in which all political parties will be consulted “without exception nor exclusion.” The move was one of reconciliation, but it was not clear how far the 77-year-old Mebazaa, who has been part of Tunisia’s ruling class for decades, would go to invite the opposition into the government.
It was also unclear who would emerge as the top political leaders in a post-Ben Ali Tunisia: The autocratic leader has utterly dominated politics for decades, placing his allies in power and sending opponents to jail or into exile.
On the streets, the unrest was frightening.
A fire at a prison in the Mediterranean coastal resort of Monastir killed 42 people, coroner Tarek Mghirbi told The Associated Press on Saturday. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.
In Mahdia, further down the coast, there was a rebellion inside a prison holding an estimated 1,000 prisoners, with inmates setting fire to their mattresses. Soldiers opened fire and five inmates were killed, a top local official said. The director of the prison let the inmates flee to avoid further bloodshed, the official said, asking not to be identified because of security concerns.
Security forces and unidentified assailants had a shootout Saturday in front of the Interior Ministry that left two bodies on the ground. It was not clear whether they were dead or who they are.
Sporadic gunfire echoed around in the capital on Saturday.
Black smoke billowed over a giant supermarket as looters torched and emptied it. An Associated Press photographer saw soldiers fire warning shots and try to stop looters from sacking the supermarket in Ariana, north of the capital, to no avail. Shops near the main bazaar were also looted.
Public television station TV7 broadcast phone calls from residents of working-class neighborhoods on the capital’s outskirts, describing attacks against their homes by knife-wielding assailants.
“This isn’t good at all. I’m very afraid for the kids and myself,” said Lilia Ben Romdhan, a mother of three in outer Tunis. “If (he) had stayed in the country it would be better.” Kamel Fdela, selling oranges and bananas in the neighborhood, said he wants democracy but was not sure that would happen. He also feared food shortages, with so many stores closed and others looted.
“God willing, a real man will take over,” he said.
Tunisian airspace reopened Saturday, but some flights were canceled and others left with delays. Thousands of tourists were still being evacuated from the Mediterranean nation known for its sandy beaches, desert landscapes and ancient ruins. Tour operator Thomas Cook’s German subsidiary sent home 200 tourists from Tunisia on Friday, but 1,800 were still waiting to be flown out.
President Barack Obama said he applauded the courage and dignity of protesting Tunisians, and urged all parties to keep calm and avoid violence.
Saudi Arabia confirmed Saturday that the ousted president and some family members had landed in in the Kingdom, and said that the Kingdom welcomed him with a wish for “peace and security to return to the people of Tunisia.”
Ben Ali’s turned Tunisia into a beach haven for European tourists, helping create an area of stability in volatile North Africa. There was a lack of civil rights and little or no freedom of speech, but a better quality of life for many than in neighboring countries such as Algeria and Libya.
Ben Ali won frequent praise from abroad for presiding over reforms to make the economy more competitive and attract business. Growth last year was at 3.1 percent.
Unemployment, however, was officially 14 percent but believed to be far higher among the young. Despair among job-seeking young graduates was palpable.
The riots started after an educated but jobless 26-year-old committed suicide in mid-December when police confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling without a permit. His desperate act hit a nerve, sparked copycat suicides and focused generalized anger against the regime into a widespread revolt.
Arabs across the region celebrated news of the Tunisian uprising on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Thousands of tweets congratulating the Tunisian people flooded the Internet, and many people changed their profile pictures to Tunisian flags.
Egyptian activists opposed to President Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade regime looked to the events in Tunisia with hope. About 50 gathered outside the Tunisian Embassy in Cairo to celebrate, chanting “Ben Ali, tell Mubarak a plane is waiting for him, too!” Ben Ali, 74, came to power in a bloodless palace coup in 1987. He took over from a man formally called President-for-Life — Bourguiba, the founder of modern-day Tunisia who set the Muslim country on a pro-Western course after independence from France in 1956.
Ben Ali consistently won elections with questionable tallies: In 2009, he was re-elected for a fifth five-year term with 89 percent of the vote.
US diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks called Tunisia a “police state” and described the widespread corruption there, saying Ben Ali had lost touch with his people. Social networks like Facebook helped spread the comments to the delight of ordinary Tunisians, who had complained about the same issues for years.
