Second killing of a secular opposition leader in six months.

Tunis: Protests and a general strike swept Tunisia Friday after gunmen killed an opposition head with “the same gun” used to kill a colleague, as under-fire authorities pointed to Al-Qaeda links.

Mohamed Brahmi was gunned down with the same weapon used to kill another opposition politician, Chokri Belaid, six months earlier, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said.

He said the main suspect in Brahmi’s killing was a member of the radical Sunni Muslim Salafist movement linked to Al-Qaeda.

“The first elements of the investigation show the implication of Boubaker Hakim, a Salafist extremist,” he said a day after Brahmi was gunned down outside his home near Tunis by two gunmen on a motorcycle.

The 30-year-old Paris-born suspect was already wanted in Tunisia for kidnapping and arms trafficking, the minister said.

Public security chief Mustapha Taieb Ben Amor named 14 radical Islamist suspects — including four behind bars — implicated in the two political killings.

Replying to a question, Ben Jeddou ruled out the involvement of political parties in the murders.

“The suspects are radical extremists, and some of them belong to Ansar al-Sharia,” the main Salafist group in Tunisia, he said.