Tunisia on Friday urged its estimated 50,000 to 60,000 nationals in neighboring Libya to leave "as soon as possible" because of violence that has raged there since mid-July.

"The ministry of foreign affairs urges Tunisians who find themselves in Libyan territory to return home as soon as possible," a ministry statement said.

Libyan border guards fired warning shots Friday to keep back a crowd of people trying to enter Tunisia as they fled the conflict in Libya, a Tunisian army officer said.

A Tunisian official was wounded by a stray bullet at the Ras Jdir crossing, where the incident took place and which was shut after the clashes.

Tunisia cannot cope with any massive influx of refugees who might seek to enter the country from strife-torn neighboring Libya and will close its border if necessary, the foreign minister said Wednesday.

"Our country's economic situation is precarious, and we cannot cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees," as was the case during the 2011 revolution that ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Mongi Hamdi told a press conference.

Three members of Tunisia's security forces were wounded Tuesday when militants near the border with Algeria shot at the helicopter they were traveling in, security and medical officials said.

The two soldiers and a national guardsman received treatment but their wounds were not serious enough to be admitted for more medical care, said a source in the hospital in Kasserine where the men were taken.

Two Tunisian soldiers were killed and four wounded on Saturday in a gunfight with "terrorists" several kilometers (miles) from the border with Algeria, the defense ministry told Agence France Presse.

"There was an exchange of fire between a terrorist group and a military patrol at Ghar al-Tine, four kilometers from the Tunisian-Algerian border. Two of our soldiers were martyred and four were wounded," ministry spokesman Lamjed Hamami said.

Tunisia has hit back at a deadly jihadist attack on troops by closing mosques and media outlets seen as sympathetic to extremists, raising fears of a return to the censorship of the old regime.

In the wake of a July 16 attack which left 15 soldiers dead in Mount Chaambi near the Algerian border, the authorities have laid down a "red line" against criticism of the army and police.

Italian police have arrested five migrants accused of the grisly murder of scores of fellow would-be refugees when fighting broke out on a boat making the treacherous crossing to Europe, local media reported.

Relatives of Tunisian soldier Zaki Saidani who was among 14 soldiers killed this week by suspected jihadists were shocked on Saturday to find the wrong body inside his coffin.

The defense ministry admitted that authorities had delivered the wrong body to the Saidani family who had gathered to mourn him in their home town of Metlaoui in central Tunisia.

The body of a soldier missing after a deadly attack on two army posts by suspected jihadists in Tunisia's restive western border region was found Friday, the government said, raising the toll to 15.

"During a sweep carried out by the army in the military zone on Mount Chaambi, the soldier Walid Ben Abdallah was found dead of wounds that he sustained during the terrorist attack" on Wednesday, a source at the defense ministry told Agence France-Presse.

Assailants killed 14 Tunisian soldiers in an attack on two posts near the border with Algeria, where the army has been waging a crackdown on jihadists, the government said Thursday.

"The toll is 14 dead soldiers and 20 wounded, and it is expected to rise," the defense ministry said, updating an earlier toll of four killed during the attack in the Mount Chaambi area.