TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's president visited a mountainous area near the border with Algeria on Tuesday where the army was hunting Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda, his office said. "President Moncef Marzouki arrived Mount Chambi to raise the morale of soldiers and check on the conduct of pursuit operations there", an official in the president's office told Reuters.

Tunisia received $28.8 million on Thursday in the first such retrieval of what it calls looted assets held abroad by ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family. The state news agency TAP said a cheque in that amount had been handed to President Moncef Marzouki by Ali bin Fetais al-Marri, appointed by the United Nations to head efforts to recover money from leaders overthrown in Arab uprisings.

Protesters on Monday demanded the resignation of Tunisia's minister for women's affairs, Sihem Badi, accusing her of defending a children's nursery where a three-year-old girl was raped. The protesters, among them relatives of the victim, gathered outside the ministry in Tunis shouting slogans against Badi, including "Minister of shame, get out!" and "Ministers who protect paedophiles have no place among us." The young girl was raped repeatedly by the caretaker of the nursery in La Marsa, an upscale suburb of the capital, according to the police.

TUNIS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki testified on Thursday before a judge probing the murder of opposition leader Chokri Belaid, as police narrowed their hunt for his killer to an area near the border with Algeria. The shooting of secular politician Belaid by a suspected Islamist radical on Feb. 6 provoked the biggest street protests in Tunisia since the overthrow of strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali two years ago.