Tunisian city paralyzed by pollution protests as residents hospitalised

More than 200 people have been hospitalised in recent weeks in the southern Tunisian city of Gabes with respiratory problems linked to emissions from a local chemical plant.

Mounting anger over the state-run facility — accused of causing an environmental disaster — has now paralysed the city, as a general strike and mass protests bring daily life to a halt.

Shops, schools, markets, and cafes were shuttered on October 21 as the coastal city joined a general strike called by the powerful UGTT labour union, Al Jazeera reported.

Crowds filled the streets holding banners condemning years of pollution allegedly caused by the CGT phosphate plant.

“Everything is closed in Gabes,” said Saoussen Nouisser, the UGTT’s local representative. “We’re all angry at the catastrophic environmental situation in our marginalised city.”

The unrest in Gabes — a city of nearly 400,000 people — has become one of the most serious challenges facing President Kais Saied since he consolidated power in 2021.

Saied described the crisis as an “environmental assassination,” blaming previous governments for the high rates of cancer and respiratory illness and the devastation of local ecosystems.

Residents say the plant, which has operated since 1972, converting phosphate into phosphoric acid and mineral fertilisers, is responsible for rising rates of gas poisoning, cancer, and the collapse of marine life, as radioactive waste and phosphogypsum are dumped into the sea and released into the air.

According to medical sources and NGOs, more than 200 people have been admitted to hospitals in recent weeks for respiratory distress and gas exposure.

“The plant has poisoned everything – the trees, the sea, the people,” said local environmental activist Safouan Kbibieh. “Even Gabes’s pomegranates now taste like smoke.”

Although the government pledged in 2017 to shut down the plant, officials this year instead increased production, describing phosphate as a “pillar of the national economy.”

Authorities have said that “urgent measures” are being implemented and that Chinese firms have been brought in to help limit gas emissions and stop waste from being dumped into the Mediterranean.

By Nazrin Sadigova