TUNIS, Tunisia - Tunisia's interior minister has suspended all activities of the country's former ruling party amid the most serious protests since the country's autocratic ruler fled into exile.
A statement says that the minister, Fahrat Rajhi, has suspended all activities of the party known as the RCD and intends to seek its dissolution.
The statement carried Sunday by the official TAP news agency says the suspension means there can be no more party meetings and all party offices are closed.
TAP says the measure was taken because of the "extreme urgency" of the situation, a reference to deadly protests that continued Sunday.
Earlier in the day, crowds pillaged and burned a police station in a Tunisian town where officers had shot and killed at least two demonstrators the day before.
The violence in the northwestern city of Kef was the worst in Tunisia since its autocratic president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was forced into exile Jan. 14 after a month of nationwide anti-government protests. A caretaker government is now running the North African country, but tensions remain high in Kef and elsewhere.
Crowds attacked a Kef police station, pillaging documents and equipment and setting it afire on Sunday, the official TAP news agency said. The army responded by encircling local government buildings to protect them, but tension was high.
On Saturday, police fired at an angry crowd of 1,000 people attacking the police station in Kef with stones and firebombs, killing at least two people and injuring 17, the Interior Ministry said. The crowd had tried to break into the station after the police chief "mishandled" a citizen, TAP said. Witnesses said the chief had slapped a woman.
The local police chief, Khaled Ghazouani, was placed under arrest, according to the ministry.
Kef was not the only center of tension in Tunisia, which is cleaning out traces of the Ben Ali regime, notably eliminating figures connected with the former ruling party -- but not fast enough for many citizens. The police corps, which carried out the repressive policies of Ben Ali during his 23 years in power is particularly distrusted.
Hundreds of people protested Saturday in the center-western town of Sidi Bouzid after two inmates in a neighborhood police station were killed in a fire late Friday, TAP reported.
An investigation into the cause of the blaze was ordered, but Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, speaking Saturday on the private Nessma TV station, left open the possibility that the fire was the work of "infiltrated persons" -- a reference to the former ruling party, the RCD.
Sidi Bouzid was the site of the start of Tunisia's uprising, which unfolded with the Dec. 17 self-immolation attempt by an unemployed man whose fruit and vegetable cart was confiscated by police because the man, Mohamed Bouazizi, had no permit. A police woman reportedly slapped him in an ultimate insult. Bouazizi, who later died of his burns, has become a hero in Tunisia.
