Tunisia on Wednesday saw its first deadly attack on foreigners since the 2010-2011 uprising that toppled president Zine Al Abidine Bin 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 Bin Ali flees to Saudi Arabia.
February 25: Police stations are attacked as anti-government demonstrations force Bin Ali’s last prime minister, Mohammad Ghannouchi, to resign. He is replaced by veteran politician Beji Qaid Al Sebsi.
October 27-28: Violence erupts in Sidi Bouzid after results of Tunisia’s first free election are announced, in which the Islamist Al Nahda 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 Shukri Belaid shot dead, triggering deadly protests and a political crisis that brings down Islamist prime minister Hamadi Jebali. On July 25 opposition leader Mohammad Brahmi is shot dead. In December 2014 extremists claim both killings.
July 29: Eight soldiers are killed in the Mount Chaambi area near Algeria where Tunisian forces have been hunting an Al Qaida-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 Qaida 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 extremists 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 stand-off, fanning tensions ahead of parliamentary polls.
December 21: Al Sebsi wins Tunisia’s first free presidential election.
2015
March 18: Seventeen tourists from Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain are among 21 people killed as gunmen attack a Tunis museum, according to the country’s prime minister.
