Alwaght- Thousands turned out in the Tunisian capital Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of ousting President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the uprising that inspired the Islamic Awakening across the region.
People marched through central Tunis, to remember the victims who lost their lives during the popular campaign against the Ben Ali regime.
Police were deployed in large numbers across the capital to prevent any violence amid fears that militants may target the mass rally.
Waving Tunisian flags, the participants chanted revolutionary slogans.
Prime Minister Habib Essid hailed the revolution's "achievements" in a statement, saying the uprising removed an authoritarian regime in Tunisia and paved the way for democratic changes.
"We are proud of the Tunisian exception, which dazzled the world. Tunisia broke once and for all with authoritarianism and tyranny," he said.
Ben Ali stepped down on January 14, 2011 after tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to oppose his 23-year rule, and fled to exile in Saudi Arabia, where he remains.
The revolution inspired similar uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries but only Tunisia is considered a success story of the uprisings.
The country organized widely hailed elections in 2011 and 2014, adopted a new constitution and last year its National Dialogue.
The 2014 elections saw the secular Nidaa Tounes led by Beji Caid Essebsi top legislative polls and in December that year Essebsi won Tunisia's first free presidential vote.
But the country has struggled to revive its economy, with poverty and unemployment still high.
There has also been a surge in Takfiri terrorism since Ben Ali's overthrow, most dramatically in the attacks on the Bardo museum and on a Mediterranean resort last year that killed a total of 60 people, all but one of them foreign tourists.
Meanwhile thousands of Tunisian nationals have j o i ned Takfiri terror groups in Libya, Iraq and Syria thus creating a major security nightmare for the country in case they return.
