At least 40 officers have been injured and one policeman died after being lynched by demonstrators.
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The unrest spread around the country, including to Tunis, where shops were burnt and looted in one suburb, prompting the interior ministry on Friday to impose a 8:00 pm to 5:00 am curfew.
After meeting French President Francois Hollande in Paris, Mr Essid was due to return to Tunisia and visit Kasserine on Saturday.
Tunisia’s Prime Minister Habib Essid shares a smile with ministers prior to preside over an extraordinary Cabinet meeting in Carthage, outside Tunis, Saturday Jan. 23, 2016.
Five years after the overthrow of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, street demonstrations against unemployment and poverty are again shaking the North African nation. “We’ve been warning that the social situation was explosive”, said Abderrahman Hedhili of the Tunisian Forum For Economic and Social Rights.
President Beji Caid Essebsi Wednesday acknowledged “the current government inherited a very hard situation” with “700,000 unemployed and 250,000 of them young people who have degrees”.
“One can not speak of dignity without a job”, he said.
“But the problem that you have here in the country is that people are waiting for immediate decisions to be taken by the government”.
Interior Ministry spokesman Walid Louguini said the police officer was “fatally attacked” by the crowd as he tried to leave his auto. Weekend sports events were canceled. It’s easy: “give the people jobs, instead of pouring millions into Sousse”, said Abid Khadhraoui, another unemployed graduate. Others screamed from the top of the building before being escorted out by police, and still more held a sit-in inside the lobby. We’re not asking for much but we’re fighting for our youth.
“His dream was to work, he didn’t like taking money from people”, he said.
Protests over the lack of employment in Tunisia, which started in the western Kasserine province, have intensified and spread to other parts of the country. As on the previous days, protesters in Kasserine on Thursday set up roadblocks with burning tyres and pelted security forces with stones, an AFP correspondent said.
Tunisia has the dubious distinction of exporting the highest number of fighters to the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.
The authorities on Friday urged Tunisians to be patient with them.
“This government has forgotten us…” We won’t go back to our homes until we get something concrete this time…
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Three major Islamist militant assaults a year ago – shootings at a tourist hotel and a Tunis museum as well as a suicide bombing on troops in the capital – have hurt the economy, particularly the tourism industry. “We’re not causing chaos but just demanding jobs”, said Maher Nasri, an unemployed graduate. “It’s exhausting”, he said.
