Tunisia's interim president Fouad Mebazaa pledged in a statement on Wednesday the proclamation of a general amnesty, Tunisian TV channels reported.

He said that the country's security situation has improved and the situation is more stable now.

Mebazaa said that the people responsible for the turmoil and those criminal gangs responsible for the violence were arrested.

He also said that the country's unity government will try to make a radical rupture with the past, adding that there will be a separation between political parties and the state.

The new government will hold its first cabinet meeting on Thursday.

In a related event, the official press agency TAP said that the 40-year-old journalist Fahem Boukkadous who had been accused by the former regime of belonging to a "criminal group" for covering the 2008 Gafsa social upheaval, was freed on Wednesday.

Tunisian TV also reported that 33 members of the family of the ousted president were arrested on Wednesday. One of the former president's closest aides, Abdallah Kallel, was prevented from leaving the country for France. Kallel was among the officials who were dismissed from the RCD on Tuesday.