TUNIS, Jan 15: Tunisia teetered on the edge of chaos on Saturday as it began a delicate transition period with controls suddenly loosened following the end of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's authoritarian rule.

Bands of looters defied a curfew to go on the rampage while a fire in a prison apparently linked to the violence killed at least 42 inmates, with attacks reported on other jails.

Television pictures showed weeping civilians pleading for help against the gangs.

However decades of repression under Ben Ali made Tunisians reluctant to speak their minds, refusing to identify those responsible.

A French diplomat who went to the rescue of two journalists of the Paris daily Le Monde who had been threatened, said, “I saw gangs breaking down doors to get people out and beat them up in the street.

“These gangs consisted of police in plainclothes and in uniform and unidentified individuals armed with chains, metal bars and clubs.” He added: “One of the policemen told me they were supporters of Ben Ali who are convinced that he will come back.”

Military helicopters flew over the capital Saturday while police sealed off the centre of the city, where abandoned stolen cars littered the streets, and shops and luxury homes pillaged.

Property belonging to the families of Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi were particularly targeted in Tunis and the posh suburbs, while supermarkets were ransacked.

Tanks and other armoured vehicles patrolled while police arrested dozens of suspected looters and took them away in trucks.

Residents variously blamed Ben Ali loyalists, escaped prisoners and renegade police.

In the eastern city of Monastir a fire in the prison killed at least 42 inmates, a doctor said, while incidents at other jails apparently linked to the country's political crisis left several people injured.

“Thirty-one bodies were taken to the morgue and another 11 have followed,” Dr Ali Chatli, head of the forensic medicine department at Fatouma Bourguiba hospital at Monastir, 160kms south of Tunis, said.

Chatli said the fire was caused by an inmate who set light to a mattress in a dormitory housing nearly 90 people in an attempt to escape.

At the same time, shots were fired outside the jail, sparking further panic, he said. At Messadine, not far from Monastir, witnesses said a score of women had been wounded when shooting broke out after families rushed to the town's prison on reports of a release of inmates.

The witnesses said men dressed as policemen had spread the rumours then fired on the crowd with weapons seized in the neighbouring town of Msaken.

Further south at Mahdia the head of the city hospital, Radhouane Harbi, said an attack on the prison had injured three people and added that he feared deaths had occurred inside the facility.

West of Tunis witnesses reported attacks on the country's largest jail at Mornaguia, and also at Fejja.

At Mornaguia military helicopters flew over the area warning the population against stray bullets.

At Kasserine in the centre, where more than 50 people were reported killed in three days of rioting last week, Sadok Mahmoudi, a member of the regional branch of the Tunisian workers' union UGTT, said there had been an attempted raid on the town's prison.—AFP