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Tunisia president lifts state of emergency

06 March 2014 20:41 (UTC +04:00)

"The president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces... issued a decree lifting the state of emergency in the whole country from Wednesday, March 5, 2014," Marzouki’s office said in a statement on Thursday.

The emergency rule is lifted four months early, given the president’s decision in November to extend it for eight months until the end of June.

The statement also noted that this new situation will not affect “the implementation of laws and policies in place in the country"

Tunisia, the birthplace of pro-democracy protests across North Africa and the Middle East, has been facing sporadic militant attacks since the overthrow of longtime dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in January 2011.

The country established special military zones last year on the borders with Algeria and Libya to stem the activity of armed groups operating there.

Tunisian security forces have since been fighting militants holed up in the remote border regions of western Tunisia, mainly in the Chaambi mountains.

The al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia is one of the groups blamed for much of the deadly violence in Tunisia over the past years.

The government says the group was behind the separate killings of two secular politicians in 2013, which plunged Tunisia into a political crisis.