Tunisia Islamists arrested after clashes in capital

By Andrew Hammond and Tarek Amara

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian police arrested 26 Islamists on Tuesday after they clashed with a group of lawyers, a witness and a government official said, as tensions rise over the country's post-revolutionary future.

The Islamists had been demanding the release of seven fellow fundamentalists when they got into a confrontation outside the justice ministry with a group of lawyers, who generally favour a secular course for the nation after January's revolution.

The violence, in which one lawyer was hospitalised, flared two days after dozens of Islamist fundamentalists known as Salafis attacked a cinema in central Tunis over of a Tunisian short film whose title they regarded as offensive.

Police arrested seven men after that incident, an interior ministry official said, and this led to Tuesday's incident.

"Around 100 men gathered in front of the ministry of justice to demand the release of the seven men," a witness said on Tuesday. "There was a verbal exchange with five lawyers. Then they attacked the lawyers and one was taken to hospital."

An interior ministry official said 26 men were later arrested and identified them as Salafi, a term for Sunni Muslim traditionalists who advocate returning to what they consider to be the practices of early Muslims.

Islamists have become a stronger force in Tunisia since the fall of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled for over 23 years with an iron security grip, in the popular uprising.

An interim government is overseeing a transition to democracy via elections in October to a body charged with writing a new constitution, before parliamentary and presidential elections next year.