Following the assassination of Mohammed Brahmi, a well-known leftwing secular opposition leader who openly criticizes Ennahda, the ruling Islamist party in Tunisia, thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to protest the gruesome killing.

Mr Brahmi, the leader of the opposition Movement of the People party, was gunned down outside his home in front of his wife and youngest daughter. It was the second assassination of an opposition politician this year, coming just five months after the killing of Chokri Belaid, a prominent secular MP.

Soon after his death on Thursday, thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate around Tunis. Outside the hospital where Brahmi was taken a crowd that included his daughter, Belkaeis (pictured above), mourned the politician's killing. Protesters in the region also set fire to Ennahda offices while the powerful UGTT labor confederation called for a general strike on Friday.

Brahmi's killing appears to have many similarities to the assassination of Belaid, who was gunned down outside his house by radical Islamists that remain on the loose, and his family also accused Ennahda of being behind his death.

"It was them who killed them," his sister Chhiba Brahmi told the AFP news agency. "Our family had the feeling that Mohammed would suffer the same fate as Chokri Belaid."

Ennahda released a statement calling Brahmi's death a "cowardly and despicable crime" and urging the government to "arrest those who committed this crime and reveal those behind them who have targeted the stability of the country."

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle condemned Brahmi's killing and urged Tunisia to continue with its democratic transition. The United States called it a "cowardly act," with State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf asking for a "transparent and professional investigation."

http://www.infonubia.com/2013/07/protests-erupts-in-tunisia-after.html