Hundreds protest in Tunisia over deadly school wall collapse

MAZOUNA: Hundreds of Tunisians protested in the small central town of Mazouna, Tunisia on Tuesday after a school wall collapse killed three high school students in the town.

The demonstrators gathered near the town’s National Guard post to demand “justice” for the three sixth-formers killed on Monday, an AFP journalist reported

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Video circulated on social media showed residents blocking surrounding streets with burning tyres.

“We have no work, no protection, nothing,” a protester said in one of the videos. “Mazouna is marginalised.”

Inland districts of Tunisia away from the tourist resorts of the Mediterranean coast have long complained of underinvestment by the government.

Mazouna lies some 70 kilometres from the city of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of the 2011 revolution that toppled long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

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Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union confederation called for schools nationwide to go on strike in protest at “the authorities’ failure to find real and serious solutions to save public schools”.

The office of President Kais Saied said he had called for “care in the future to prevent such painful incidents from recurring and to accelerate the necessary maintenance work in all educational institutions”.