Tunisian city on strike over factory pollution

Workers in the southern Tunisian city of Gabes launched a general strike on Tuesday following weeks of protest over a chemical factory residents blame for a spike in serious health issues.

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Thousands have recently rallied in the city of some 400,000 inhabitants to demand the closure of a state-run phosphate processing plant which they say is behind a rise in gas poisonings after it ramped up production.

The plant, inaugurated in 1972, processes phosphate to make fertilisers, and some of the gases and waste it discharges into the open air and Mediterranean are radioactive and can cause cancer, researchers have found.

"Everything is closed in Gabes," said Saoussen Nouisser, a local representative of Tunisia's main labour union, UGTT, which called the general strike.