At least 37 people have been killed in a gun attack on a beach in front of hotels in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, in the country’s bloodiest day since the 2010 revolution.
Tunisia’s health ministry said the dead included British, German and Belgian tourists, as well as Tunisians. The Irish government said an Irish woman was also killed. Thirty-six people were injured.
Witnesses reported that gunmen opened fire on the beach between the Soviva and Imperial Marhaba hotels. Officials said one gunman had been shot dead but there are unconfirmed reports that another may be on the run.
Tunisia’s interior ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui described the attack as terrorism.
The country’s secretary of state for security said the dead gunman was a student previously unknown to police. “He is Tunisian, originally from the Kairouan region,” Rafik Chelly told Mosaique FM radio. “This person was not known [to us].”
“He entered by the beach, dressed like someone who was going to swim, and he had a beach umbrella with his gun in it. Then when he came to the beach he used his weapon.”
Tunisian radio had reported earlier that most of those caught up in the gunfire were British or German tourists. Locals are less likely to go to the beach during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
A security source at the scene said the body of one attacker, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, lay where police had shot him dead.
The attack in Tunisia came on the same day that a man was decapitated and several others injured in an attack with apparent Islamist connections at a factory in France. In Kuwait, Islamic State claimed responsibility for an explosion that struck a Shia mosque capital after Friday prayers.
Tunisia has been on high alert since March when Islamist militants attacked the Bardo museum in Tunis, killing a group of foreign tourists.
Sousse, 93 miles (150km) from Tunis, is one of Tunisia’s most popular beach resorts, drawing visitors from Europe and neighbouring north African countries.
Speaking in Brussels, the British prime minister, David Cameron, offered “our solidarity in fighting this evil of terrorism”.
“The people who do these things, they sometimes claim to do it in the name of Islam,” Cameron said. “They don’t. Islam is a religion of peace.” He said the attackers acted from “a twisted and perverted ideology we have to confront with everything we have”.
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Source: The Guardian