At least 15 of the 38 victims killed in the shooting in a Tunisian hotel in the tourist city Sousse, were British.
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The attack lasted about five minutes, starting on the beach, continuing at the pool and in the hotel lobby, and ending when the gunman was killed in the hotel’s parking lot, Aroui said.
The Sousse atrocity is “the most significant terrorist attack on British people” since July 7, 2005, when 52 people were killed,
Foreign minister Tobias Ellwood
said. Prime Minister David Cameron also called the attack on the beach “savage”.
Fallon told broadcaster Sky news there was no warning ahead of the attack, but travel advice to Tunisia would be reviewed at an emergency United Kingdom government meeting later on Saturday.
Another 39 people including 25 Britons, seven Tunisians and three Belgians were wounded in Friday’s attack, the health ministry said. According to Rukmini Callimachi a correspondent from New York, “ISIS Spokesman Adnani promised rewards for those who carry out attacks in Ramadan and make it a month of fire for the kuffar”. Like many of those in the hospital, she is still wearing the bracelet that identifies her as a guest of the Imperial Marhaba Hotel.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for 27 deaths at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait.
Saturday was declared a day of mourning.
The attacks appeared to have no connection in terms of tactic or target. No other details were provided. At that moment, Bowmaffeh was helping lifeguard Ghrib and about a dozen other hotel staff pull wounded tourists off the beach.
French special police forces escort a woman from a residential building during a raid in Saint-Priest, near Lyon, France, on June 26, 2015, following an attempt to blow up a chemicals plant. “Terrorism has no place in any society”, it said in a statement released shortly after the assaults.
Thousands of tourists fled from Tunisia on Saturday after the country’s worst terrorist attack killed 38 people – including 15 Britons – as the government struggles to prevent future jihadi attacks against the all-important tourism sector. He said the government would also close down 80 mosques suspected of inciting extremism within a week. “No mosque that doesn’t conform to the law will be tolerated”, Essid said.
Authorities arrested the owner of a auto that took the suicide bomber to the Shi’ite Imam al-Sadeq mosque which were filled with 2,000 worshippers when the assailant detonated the bombs strapped on his body. The French news agency described Salhi as a 35-year-old married father of three. Relatives of those unaccounted for said they were expecting the “worst”. But there was tiny sign of the violence a day earlier.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said because Sousse is an area popular with holidaymakers from the United Kingdom “we have to assume that a high proportion of those killed and injured will have been British”.
Christopher Chivvis, of the global Security and Defense Policy Center and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corp., said it was important that the attacks were different in nature.
Along with efforts to stop radicalised citizens from traveling to foreign battlefields, coalition members also will have to find ways to intercede at “the point of recruitment and radicalisation, which is often a personal computer or cell phone”, he added.
If you are British and now in Tunisia following the attack, or are concerned for someone who is, you can find details of what to do here.
The United States has killed leaders of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, but the group has maintained a string of branches and melded itself into local insurgencies. Officials said that if the assessment found that the attacks were linked, officials would seek to determine whether the Islamic State had actively directed, coordinated or inspired them.
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He condemned those responsible as “evil”, saying the victims were “innocent holidaymakers relaxing and enjoying time with their friends and families… they didn’t pose a threat to anybody”. “We’ve not been told anything”.
