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Several thousand people took to the streets in southern Tunisia on Wednesday, demanding the closure of an ageing chemical factory that locals blame for a surge in poisonings and health problems.
The demonstration reached the vicinity of the Tunisian Chemical Group’s large fertiliser plant, a public company, where police responded with heavy use of tear gas.
Hundreds of demonstrators retreated, while some groups of young people remained, chanting and shouting their anger. Several individuals reportedly fainted, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.
In recent weeks, scores of residents in Gabes have been hospitalised, with locals attributing the illnesses to potentially cancer-causing waste from the nearby phosphate processing plant.
“This has to stop. My three kids and I are asthmatic; my husband and my mother died from cancer as a result of the plant,” said 52-year-old Lamia Ben Mohamed.
Demonstrators marched with banners and signs reading “Stop genocide,” “Gabes without oxygen,” and “The complex is killing us under the state’s watch,” while dozens of motorcycles honked at the head of the rally.
The demonstration, organised by the Stop Pollution collective, called for the permanent closure of the fertiliser facility, whose discharges into the Mediterranean have long provoked discontent.
Residents blame the plant for collapsed fishing stocks, beach pollution, respiratory illnesses, and cancer.
Tensions have escalated in the past month, with one local official reporting that 122 people had been treated or hospitalised for symptoms linked to the plant the previous day.
Marwa Salah, a 33-year-old cardiologist at Gabes Regional Hospital, said she hoped to “live without the pollution from the complex that has brought us nothing.”
According to Slah Ben Hamed, regional leader of the UGTT union, recent waves of poisoning were caused by “outdated equipment” and “gas leaks.”
Fertiliser production at the plant involves processing phosphates with sulphuric acid and ammonia.
Despite a 2017 government promise to gradually close the facility, authorities earlier this year announced plans to increase production.
Experts have questioned whether it is feasible to safely clean up a complex that first opened in 1972.
