An explosion wounded a civilian driver on Friday in Tunisia's Chaambi mountains near the border with Algeria, where troops are tracking Islamist militants, the defense ministry said.

"An improvised mine exploded as a tractor passed the entry to the Chaambi Mountain reserve. The driver was wounded," defense ministry spokesman Taoufik Rahmouni told Agence France Presse.

Police in northern Tunisia Friday used tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the arrest of a group of Salafists, the interior ministry told Agence France Presse.

Around 100 Salafist Islamists gathered in front of a police station in Rouhia in the northern province of Siliana to demand the release of 16 men from the town's mosque who were arrested on Monday, a security source said.

Switzerland said on Friday it will hand over to Tunisia $40 million (29 million euros) stashed in Swiss bank accounts by the family of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Swiss authorities had frozen the funds as part of a probe launched following the revolution that forced the longstanding Tunisian leader from power in 2011.

Tunisia's public prosecutor appealed a seven-year jail term on Monday for two policemen jailed for rape, and demanded a retrial with a view to seeking tougher sentences.

The prosecution insists on characterizing the facts as "sex under duress with the threat of violence, under Paragraph 227 of the Penal Code, Article 1," his spokesman Sofiene Sliti told AFP.

Protesters on Wednesday ransacked the offices of Tunisia's main workers' union in the tense town of Ben Guerdane for not backing a strike demanding the reopening of the Libyan border crossing.

Frustration has been growing in Ben Guerdane at Tripoli's decision to shut the nearby border post in early March in a bid to stem the trade in smuggled Libyan petrol, on which the local economy depends.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Algiers later Wednesday at the start of a North African tour expected to be dominated by the threat posed by al-Qaida.

Jihadist violence has plagued the vast Sahel-Sahara region since the 2011 overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, prompting a French-led military intervention in Algeria's southern neighbor Mali in January last year.

Two Tunisian policemen were convicted late Monday of raping a young woman and sentenced to seven years in prison in a case that has captured international attention for the victim.

Earlier in court the two policemen had denied the charge, instead accusing the woman of seeking to have sex with them, provoking an emotional outburst from the alleged victim.

Two Tunisian policemen accused of raping a young woman denied the charge Monday, instead accusing her of seeking to have sex with them, provoking an emotional outburst from the alleged victim.

"They denied everything," Radhia Nasraoui, a lawyer of the young woman known by her pseudonym Meriem Ben Mohamed, told Agence France Presse.

A leader of a controversial pro-Islamist militia blamed for several violent incidents in Tunisia has been jailed for 14 months for inciting violence and for verbal attacks, a judicial source said Friday.

"The court in Tunis sentenced Imed Dghij to eight months for inciting violence and six months for attacking others on social networks," the source told Agence France Presse.

Authorities in the Seychelles said Tuesday it was allowing the son-in-law of Tunisia's deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to continue his asylum on the islands for another 12 months.

Sakhr El Materi, who was convicted in absentia of corruption by a Tunisian court, appealed for asylum in the Indian Ocean archipelago in February 2013.