Six North Africans Have Set Themselves On Fire: Tunisia Unrest Stirs Passions Across North African Region (404 hits)
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Six North Africans have set themselves on fire since the self-immolation that set off the uprising in Tunisia.
TUNIS — Passions unleashed by the revolution in Tunisia resonated throughout the region on Monday as an Egyptian and a Mauritanian became the latest of six North Africans to set themselves on fire in an imitation of the self-immolation that set off the uprising here a month ago.
In Egypt, Abdo Abdel Moneim, a 50-year-old restaurant owner, poured a gallon of gasoline over his head and set himself ablaze outside the Parliament building on Monday morning in downtown Cairo. Around the same time in Mauritania, Yacoub Ould Dahoud was setting fire to himself in his parked car near Parliament in Nouakchott.
And on Sunday, Senouci Touat of Mostaganem, Algeria, 34 and unemployed, set himself on fire in his hometown, the fourth attempted self-immolation in his country since the Tunisian street revolt exploded in furious demonstrations in recent days. And while there were no immediate signs that their actions inspired widespread protests, as the victims all apparently intended, the immolations stood as gruesome testimony to the power of the Tunisian example.
In Tunis, the fight was far from over. More than a thousand protesters swarmed once again onto the city’s main artery, Bourguiba Boulevard, in what they described as an effort to sustain their revolution, this time in a battle pitting the small group of recognized opposition leaders against the masses in the streets. ...
