TUNISIALIVE, MOSAïQUE FM (Tunisia), BBC NEWS (UK), AFP
TUNIS – Chokri Belaid, a senior leader in Tunisia“s left-leaning opposition Democratic Patriotic party, was shot dead as he was leaving his house in Tunis.
“My brother was assassinated. I am desperate and depressed,” Belaid’s brother Abdelmajid Belaid told the Agence France Presse news agency.
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Chokri Belaid – Photo: Rais67
After being shot in the neck and in the head, Belaid was rushed to Ennasr clinic in Tunis, the news website tunisialive reports.
No one has yet taken responsability for the shooting, and the motives of the murder remain unclear. BBC News notes that Chokri Belaid was a prominent secular opponent of Tunisia’s moderate Islamist-led government, and just this past Saturday Belaid had accused “mercenaries” hired by the Ennahda party of carrying out an attack on a Democratic Patriotic meeting.
Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, of Ennahda, quickly condemned the attack, calling Chokri Belaid’s assassination “a crime against Tunisia” on the news radio station Mosaïque FM.
