Authorities in Tunisia, engaged in a battle against home-grown militants, have cashiered 110 members of the security forces for suspected links to extremist groups

Authorities in Tunisia, engaged in a battle against home-grown militants, have cashiered 110 members of the security forces for suspected links to extremist groups, the interior ministry's spokesman said Wednesday.

Those cashiered belong to "different corps - police, national guard, the army, customs," said Walid Louguini, without saying when the action took place.

Their sacking "is linked... to very serious suspicions of membership in terrorist organizations or sympathy toward them," Louguini said, adding that they were the result of investigations dating to the beginning of the year.

Senior ministry official Taoufik Bouaoun told private Radio Med on Monday that "five or six" members of the security forces had been arrested for "direct links" with smuggling or terrorism.

Bouaoun said that since he joined the ministry after last November's elections, it had been discovered that certain appointments had not been subjected to proper security clearances.