An armed group clashed with Tunisian security forces after attacking their post on the border with Algeria, leaving one of the assailants dead, the interior ministry said on Saturday.

An 18-year-old man was killed and a customs agent was wounded in the attack that took place at the Bouchebka post overnight, said ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui.

Tunisia's premier-designate Mehdi Jomaa was tasked Friday with forming a cabinet of independents to end months of political deadlock and lead the country to fresh elections after the Islamist-led government finally quit.

Jomaa's appointment after his predecessor Ali Larayedh's resignation on Thursday, under an agreement to get Tunisia's democratic transition back on track, comes nearly three years after veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's overthrow in the first Arab Spring uprising.

Tunisia was waiting Friday for the president to task Premier-designate Mehdi Jomaa with forming a cabinet of independents to lead the country to fresh elections after the Islamist-led government finally quit.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ali Larayedh's resignation on Thursday, under an agreement to end months of political deadlock and get Tunisia's democratic transition back on track, comes nearly three years after veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's overthrow in the first Arab Spring uprising.

Tortured under Tunisia's ousted dictatorship, Islamist premier Ali Larayedh preached reconciliation during his turbulent 11 months in office but twin political assassinations eventually forced his resignation Thursday.

Larayedh took office last February, after the murder of leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid by suspected jihadists brought down his Islamist predecessor Hamadi Jebali.

Tunisia's Islamist premier Ali Larayedh announced on Thursday that he had handed his resignation to President Moncef Marzouki in line with an accord to end months of political deadlock.

"As I promised to a short while ago ... I have just submitted the government's resignation," Larayedh told a press conference.

Clashes erupted in central Tunisia Wednesday between police and demonstrators as discontent mounts over new taxes and a failure to improve living conditions three years after the revolution.

Dozens of protesters tried to force their way into the offices of the ruling Islamist party Ennahda in the town of Kasserine, but police drove them back with tear gas, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

Tunisia voted Monday to enshrine gender equality in its draft constitution, a key step towards safeguarding its relatively progressive laws on women's rights, with the ruling Islamists under pressure to compromise.

"All male and female citizens have the same rights and duties. They are equal before the law without discrimination," states article 20 of the text, which was approved by 159 lawmakers out of the 169 who voted.

Debate on Tunisia's new constitution was suspended on Sunday after a deputy claimed he had received death threats because a colleague accused him of being an "enemy of Islam."

The accusation came a day after the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) adopted articles making Islam the state religion but guaranteeing freedom of conscience.

Tunisia's Islamist-dominated constituent assembly compromised Saturday in rejecting Islam as the main source of law as it voted on a new constitution for the country that spawned the Arab Spring.

But while it established Islam as the state religion, it promised freedom of conscience, despite one MP warning that "satanists" and "idolaters" would be practicing in public and criticism by a rights group it was too vague.

Tunisian newspapers were decidedly downbeat Saturday in their assessment of the first full day of voting by the National Constituent Assembly on a new constitution.

The assembly began going through the charter on Friday in a process expected to end on January 14, the third anniversary of the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the revolution that sparked the Arab Spring.