Protesters clashed with police Friday in the flashpoint town of Siliana, where violence has left hundreds wounded this week, as political instability mounts two years after Tunisia's revolution.

Thousands took to the streets of the impoverished town demanding the governor's resignation and financial aid in a fourth straight day of unrest, with the authorities battling to maintain order.

Protesters clashed with police Friday in Tunisia's flashpoint town of Siliana, where violence has left hundreds wounded this week, as political instability mounts two years after the revolution.

Thousands took to the streets of the impoverished town demanding the governor's resignation and financial aid in a fourth straight day of unrest, with the authorities battling to maintain order.

The case against a young Tunisian woman allegedly raped by two policemen has been dropped, her lawyer said on Thursday.

The case was dismissed "against the woman and her boyfriend," lawyer Emna Zahrouni said.

Protesters torched a security post and two police vehicles in central Tunisia on Thursday, Agence France Presse reported, as anti-government protests spread from the town of Siliana.

Hundreds of people demonstrated for a third straight day in Siliana demanding that the government-appointed regional governor step down, raising fears of fresh violence after bloody clashes there on Wednesday that left more than 250 people wounded.

Tunisia's Court of Cassation on Wednesday ordered the release of TV owner Sami Fehri, detained in August in a move NGOs denounced as an attempt by the authorities to silence their critics, his lawyer said.

"He will be freed in the coming hours. The judgment has just been given and we are waiting for the information to be relayed to the civil prison in Mornaguia," near Tunis, Sonia Dahmani told Agence France Presse.

More than 250 people were wounded on Wednesday in a second day of clashes between Tunisian security forces and thousands of protesters in a poor southwestern town, a hospital source told Agence France Presse.

Medics at the hospital in Siliana said 265 people had been treated for bruises, fractures and cuts, some of them having been hit by birdshot.

A strike by Tunisians protesting government neglect has degenerated into clashes with police that have left 14 people wounded.

Witnesses and the state news agency reported that residents of the central town of Siliana went on a general strike Tuesday and marched through the streets, demanding more government funds and development for their town.

Significant welfare reform must be implemented across the Middle East and North Africa to satisfy the socio-economic demands of the Arab Spring, according to a World Bank-Gallup survey published on Tuesday.

Stronger "social safety nets" -- such as income support and temporary employment programs -- are needed in the region, where government fuel subsidies "benefit the non-poor to a much greater extent than the poor," it said.

The European Union announced Monday it was lifting its asset freeze on Egyptian and Tunisian funds, imposed as sanctions before the countries' strongmen rulers were ousted in the Arab Spring uprisings.

The EU's council of ministers said it had taken steps to "facilitate the return of misappropriated funds to the Egyptian and Tunisian authorities" now that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had been replaced by elected governments.

At least 40 Tunisian Islamist prisoners are still on hunger strike, the justice ministry told Agence France Presse on Monday, hours after announcing that the almost two-week protest had ended.

"After checking, only some of the strikers have ended (their protest). We have no set number because it changes all the time," said ministry official Fadhel Saihi.