Tunis: Tunisia on Wednesday saw its first deadly attack on foreigners since the 2010-2011 uprising that toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power.
But the country that gave birth to the Arab Spring has seen a sharp rise in Islamist militancy which has left dead about 60 police and military personnel.
A timeline of unrest:
-- 2010 --
- December 17: A young university graduate who has only been able to find work as a fruit seller burns himself to death to protest police harassment and unemployment in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, unleashing rioting which spreads across the country. Some 338 are killed.
-- 2011 --
- January 14: Under massive popular pressure Ben Ali flees to Saudi Arabia.
- February 25: Police stations are attacked as anti-government demonstrations force Ben Ali`s last prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, to resign. He is replaced by veteran politician Beji Caid Essebsi.
- October 27-28: Violence erupts in Sidi Bouzid after results of Tunisia`s first free election are announced, in which the Islamist Ennahda party wins most seats in a constituent assembly.
-- 2012 --
- June 11-12: Unrest triggered by an art exhibition of work deemed offensive to Islam. The government blames hardline Salafists and old regime loyalists.
- September 14: Four attackers killed in clashes at the US embassy amid protests over an anti-Islam film.
- November 27-December 1: 300 hurt in clashes between police and protesters in Siliana, southwest of Tunis.
-- 2013 --
- February 6: Prominent opposition leader Chokri Belaid shot dead, triggering deadly protests and a political crisis that brings down Islamist prime minister Hamadi Jebali. On July 25 opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi is shot dead. In December 2014 jihadists claim both killings.
- July 29: Eight soldiers are killed in the Mount Chaambi area near Algeria where Tunisian forces have been hunting an Al-Qaeda-linked group since December. On August 2, the army announces a major operation against Islamist militants in the area.
- October 30: A suicide bomber blows himself up on a beach in the resort town of Sousse, leaving no victims, while security forces foil another planned attack nearby.
-- 2014 --
- February 4: The suspected Islamist assassin of Belaid is killed in a police raid, one of seven heavily armed terrorists slain in an operation launched at a house in a Tunis suburb.
- June 13: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb says it was responsible for an attack on the interior minister`s home that killed four policemen, the first such claim in the country.
- July 16: Suspected jihadists kill 15 soldiers in the Mount Chaambi region, in the deadliest such attack in the army`s history.
- October 24: Police kill six suspected militants, five of them women, in a raid on a suburban house after a 28-hour standoff, fanning tensions ahead of parliamentary polls.
- December 21: Essebsi wins Tunisia`s first free presidential election.
-- 2015 --
- March 18: Twenty foreign tourists are among 22 people killed as gunmen attack a Tunis museum, according to the interior ministry.
