Several thousand residents staged a demonstration in Gabes, a city in southern Tunisia, on Wednesday to demand the closure of a chemical complex, after numerous cases of intoxication in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, dozens of people living near the Tunisian Chemical Group (GCT), including schoolchildren, suffered fainting fits attributed to the plant, which produces phosphate-based fertilisers.
Footage posted on social media shows unconscious young people being carried by firefighters or transported in an ambulance with oxygen masks over their faces.
According to a local official, 122 people were treated or hospitalised, the AFP news agency reported, including cases of suffocation, leg pain and numbness.
This was the third such episode since early September, following the hospitalisation of around 20 people on 9 September and 50 more on 10 October.
