Tunis – One person died and 18 others were injured, including two leading figures from Tunisia’s Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party in a fire at its headquarters on Thursday, authorities and party members said.
Ennahdha said on Facebook that one of its “activists”, a former receptionist born in 1970, had died in the blaze.
The interior ministry said his “charred” body had been found in the building.
Tunisian media cited judiciary sources as saying the person had “set himself ablaze on the ground floor” of the building.
Former prime minister and Ennahdha Vice President Ali Laaryadh was hospitalised after jumping from the second floor of the building to escape the flames, as was advisory board head Abdelkarim Harouni, party members said.
An AFP correspondent saw smoke pouring out of the windows of the building in central Tunis as people clambered out.
ALSO READ | Tunisian president sacks two consuls, orders financial audits
The party’s president Rached Ghannouchi, speaker of Tunisia’s suspended parliament, told journalists the man who died had been “another victim of poverty, marginalisation… and an unjust media war again Ennahdha”.
Ghannouchi said the man “spent 10 years in prison for his activism against the dictatorship” of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, but a decade after the revolution that overthrew the longtime ruler, “he had nothing, not even the minimum level of dignity”.
Ghannouchi was not in the building at the time of the fire, Ennahdha official Mondher Lounisi said.
The interior ministry announced that an investigation had been launched into the causes of the blaze.
Ennahdha, a banned opposition movement under dictator Ben Ali, has been the largest force in Tunisia’s parliament since shortly after the country’s 2011 revolution.
It played a central role in national politics until President Kais Saied sacked the government, suspended the assembly and seized a string of powers on July 25.
The blaze came three days after the party warned it was facing an orchestrated “defamation” campaign aimed at shutting it out of national politics.
Follow African Insider on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
For more African news, visit Africaninsider.com
