The secretary to the Tunisian ambassador in Libya has been kidnapped, the foreign ministry in Tunis said on Saturday.

According to an embassy source, the incident occurred on Friday when the kidnappers forced Mohamed bin Sheikh into their vehicle, which had stopped his car in the Ain Zara suburb of eastern Tripoli.

A young rapper whose song posted on YouTube stirred a sensation in Tunisia has been freed after spending almost nine months behind bars for cannabis use, his lawyer said Thursday.

Ahmed Laabidi, known by his alias Kafon, was "placed under conditional release" on Wednesday night, Ghazi Mrabet told Agence France Presse.

Photographs of what the Tunisian government says are young jihadists training to fight in Syria have caused surprise amid claims that some show a boy scouts camp instead.

At a news conference on Monday, the ministry presented pictures of a group of young men working in a field, claiming that they belonged to a "terrorist cell" in the Monastir region southeast of Tunis.

Security forces killed three suspected jihadists in an anti-terrorist operation Monday in a region of northwest Tunisia where Islamist militants shot dead four people last month, the interior ministry said.

The police surrounded a house in the Jendouba region straddling the Algerian border and killed "three terrorists," ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said, without elaborating.

Tunisian premier Mehdi Jomaa arrived in the United Arab Emirates Saturday to start a tour of five oil-rich Gulf monarchies, where he hopes to boost ties and attract investors.

Jomaa heads a government of independents formed in January after the ruling Islamist-dominated coalition left power, and is tasked with turning around Tunisia's faltering economy.

A Tunisian court has given a controversial hardline Salafist a three-month suspended prison sentence for preaching at a mosque without permission, a judicial source said Friday.

The ruling comes as authorities seek to regain control of certain mosques they say have fallen under the influence of radical Islamists.

Israeli tourists aboard a cruise ship were prevented from entering Tunisia due to a surprise decision by the Tunisian government, the cruise operator said on Monday.

"During Norwegian Jade's port call in La Goulette, Tunisia on Sunday, March 9, 2014, a small number of guests holding Israeli passports were not allowed to go ashore because of a last minute decision made by the Tunisian government," the Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement.

A group of Tunisian prostitutes demanded Tuesday to be allowed back to work, 18 months after their brothel in the resort town of Sousse was attacked by hardline Salafists and closed down.

A delegation handed deputy parliament speaker Meherzia Laabidi, a woman, a petition signed by 120 prostitutes calling for their brothel in the popular coastal resort to be allowed to reopen.

Tunisia's president has lifted a state of emergency in force since the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, his office said Thursday, despite a string of recent jihadist attacks.

The country has been rocked by sporadic violence since the January 2011 revolution, which ignited the Arab Spring across North Africa and the Middle East.

Amnesty International welcomed Wednesday the release of a Tunisian jailed for posting caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed but called for his sentence to be quashed and his name cleared.

Jabeur Mejri, 29, was freed Tuesday, two years into a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. His release came two weeks after a presidential pardon.