Mezzouna (Tunisia) (AFP) – The deaths of three Tunisian sixth-formers in a school wall collapse in the small inland town of Mezzouna has fuelled anger over underinvestment and neglect in the nation’s hinterland.

Since Monday’s accident, angry residents have blocked roads leading to the town’s National Guard post with burning tyres, as young men clashed repeatedly with security forces.

“We’re asking for the most basic things: healthcare and education,” said Najet Messaadi.

“Instead, they sent us 112 police cars. What are we? Terrorists?”

Messaadi’s 18-year-old nephew, Mohanad Jedaida, was shot in the head with a gas grenade during the protests, leaving him in hospital unable to speak.

“They’re adding pain on top of pain,” she said. “We buried three people, and it’s possible we will bury more.”

Mohanad’s mother, Mounira Messaadi, said she fainted from tear gas while trying reaching her injured son.

“Our young people are lost, with nothing to do and only cafes to go to,” she said. "Then they ask us what the problem is?

“We’re not seeking a second revolution. We just want our rights.”

Mezzouna lies just 70 kilometres (45 miles) from the central town of Sidi Bouzid, where in December 2010 young university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi burnt himself to death in a protest against police harassment and unemployment that triggered the Arab Spring uprisings of the following year.

Tunisia’s arid interior has suffered from decades of underinvestment in public services and infrastructure as successive governments have prioritised the tourist resorts of the Mediterranean coast.

With the country now mired in public debt that amounts to some 80 percent of GDP, even less money has been available for investment.

“Our needs are basic and don’t require a miracle,” said human rights activist Walid Jed. “We won’t accept to live as we did.”

He said ambulances had taken too long to reach the victims of Monday’s wall collapse because they had to make the 30 kilometre (20 miles) drive from the town of Regueb, further north.

“That delay worsened the situation,” he said. “It probably led to the death of some who could have been saved.”

He said the lack of access to clean water was another pressing issue.

“When one of the students died, they couldn’t find water to wash his body before the burial,” Jed said. “That’s no longer acceptable.”

President Kais Saied visited the town of some 40,000 people on Friday but he did so at 4:00 am when few people were about and only after all trace of this week’s protests had been removed.

Saied blamed “traitors” for the poor public services in the town and alleged that troublemakers had been sent to provoke the National Guard.

Among those killed in the wall collapse was 18-year-old Mohamed Amine Messaadi, a keen footballer who had hopes of pursuing a professional career.

Football cleats still sit on a table in the family home, while schoolbooks are piled on a tiny desk.

He had attempted to leave Mezzouna multiple times, playing with teams in bigger cities like Sfax, an hour and a half’s drive east.

But a recruitment freeze had forced his latest club to let him go last autumn.

“He was sad to come back to Mezzouna,” his father, Salem Messaadi, recalled. “He was not the same person anymore. He stopped praying and would sometimes skip class.”

His mother, Chafia Fahem, is an Arabic teacher at the school where he was killed.

She said it wasn’t just the walls that were dilapidated. “Whole classrooms are at risk of collapsing,” she said.

Fahem said that both she and her husband had devoted their lives to teaching but now feel betrayed by it.

“We’re victims of the education system, of bad governance,” she said.