The Tunisian government will decide by Saturday whether to allow or ban Salafists from holding their annual congress, the interior minister said on Friday, warning however "death threats" from radical Islamists will not be tolerated.

"The final decision will be taken today or tomorrow," Lotfi Ben Jeddou told Kalima radio.

A Tunisian cigarette vendor who set himself alight in a street of the capital Tunis has died from the severe burns he suffered, a medical official said on Wednesday.

Twenty-seven-year-old Adel Khadri, who torched himself on Tuesday, "died today at 5:30 am (0430 GMT) as a result of severe burns," Imed Toiuibi, the director of the Ben Arous Burns Centre, told Agence France Prese.

A man set himself on fire Tuesday in central Tunis, an Agence France Presse reporter witnessed, hours before the country's lawmakers were to vote on a new government tasked with pulling Tunisia out of a deep political crisis.

"This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment," shouted the man before immolating himself on Habib Bourguiba avenue in front of the municipal building, according to a witness.

Hundreds of people protested in Tunis on Saturday against the Islamist-dominated regime, in a rally that was originally planned in support of women's rights, witnesses said.

"The people demand the fall of the regime!" protesters shouted as they carried placards criticizing the composition of a new cabinet announced on Friday in the latest attempt to pull Tunisia out of its worst political crisis since the revolution two years ago.

Tunisian police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters on Friday as tens of thousands joined the funeral of opposition leader Chokri Belaid whose murder plunged the country into new post-revolt turmoil.

Skirmishes erupted on the margins of the funeral procession which turned into a demonstration in Tunis, a city paralyzed by a general strike called in protest at Wednesday's assassination of the leftist leader.

The son-in-law of Tunisia's deposed former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been arrested in the Seychelles, the Tunisian authorities announced on Friday.

Sakhr El Materi, who was convicted in absentia for corruption by a Tunisian court, fled to Qatar after the mass uprising that toppled his father-in-law in January 2011, but the Gulf emirate agreed to expel him in September this year.

Israel has for the first time admitted assassinating the PLO's former number two, Abu Jihad, in a raid on the movement's Tunis headquarters in 1988, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The report, published in Israel's top-selling Yediot Aharonot, said the operation was planned by the Mossad spy agency and carried out by the Sayeret Matkal commando unit.

Fourteen U.S. tour operators have canceled cruise ship calls to Tunisia after people furious at a U.S.-made film mocking Islam attacked the American embassy earlier this month, port officials said on Friday.

Operators including Holland American, Royal Caribbean and Disney Cruise scrapped plans to make port calls at La Goulette-Tunis, which had been planned from now until the end of December.

Around 100 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Tunisia since an attack on the embassy in Tunis by angry Muslim protesters that left four people dead, several sources said on Monday.

"The American nationals were evacuated on Sunday," a diplomatic source told AFP, without saying how many had left the country.

Three people were killed on Friday and another 28 wounded in clashes at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, which was stormed by an angry mob protesting a film mocking Islam, official media said, citing the health ministry.

Two of the injured were in a critical condition, the same source said, without giving any details about the victims.