A Tunisian military appeals court jailed blogger Yassine Ayari for six months Tuesday for defaming the army, halving the previous sentence but failing to satisfy critics.

Chants of "Down with the military judge" rang out from the public gallery as the sentence was read out.

More than 25,000 Egyptians have returned from neighboring Libya since the Islamic State group posted a video earlier this month of the beheadings of Christian compatriots, the foreign ministry said Friday.

Egypt carried out air strikes against jihadist targets in Libya on February 16 in retaliation for the executions of the 21 Copts and urged its large expatriate workforce to head home for their own safety.

Tunisia will take delivery of eight Black Hawk attack helicopters from the United States this year to help it in the fight against Al-Qaida-linked jihadists, an official said Thursday.

Defense ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati told the private radio station Shems FM that the aircraft would arrive in the second half of 2015.

Libya's neighbor Tunisia and its former colonial power Italy issued a joint call on Wednesday for reconciliation among militias leading to a political settlement in the conflict-riven country.

"Today we agreed on the fact that the solution of the conflict (in Libya) should not be military, it is necessary that the solution is a political one," Tunisian Foreign Minister Taieb Baccouche told reporters after meeting his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni in Tunis.

A Tunisian court said Tuesday it would rule next week on a blogger's appeal against a one-year jail sentence for defaming the military.

Yassine Ayari was sentenced by a military court last month after publishing blogs critical of the military, in a case that was criticized by rights groups.

Almost 15,000 Egyptians have flocked home from war-torn Libya via the border crossing at Sallum, state media reported Monday, after Islamic State group jihadists murdered 21 Coptic Christians.

Last week Egyptian and Libyan warplanes hit IS targets inside Libya after the jihadists released a gruesome video on February 15 showing the Christians, 20 of them Egyptian, being beheaded.

At least 1,000 Egyptians have been evacuated from Libya through Tunisia since Friday, the Tunisian transport ministry said, following the murder of Coptic Christians by the Islamic State group.

Last week Egyptian and Libyan warplanes hit IS targets inside Libya after the jihadists released a video showing the beheadings of 21 Christians, most of them Egyptian.

Four Tunisian police were killed in a pre-dawn Wednesday attack by suspected Al-Qaida-linked militants near the Algerian border, with the prime minister vowing to "exterminate" the perpetrators.

The attack was the first deadly assault this year on government forces in Tunisia, where the police and the army have been hunting down jihadists blamed for a string of attacks on security forces.

Tunisia dispatched two cabinet ministers to the south Wednesday to hear the grievances of residents, whose anger over a crackdown on rampant smuggling in the area has sparked deadly clashes.

Many people in the relatively impoverished south, which borders Libya, make a living from smuggling, complaining of decades of government neglect and demanding the creation of jobs.

Much of southern Tunisia bordering Libya staged a general strike Tuesday following deadly clashes between police and demonstrators after the seizure of contraband fuel, unions said.

They said only the emergency services, chemists and bakers were working in the Tatouine area, and an Agence France-Presse journalist said Ben Guerdane near the Ras Jedir border post was also paralyzed.