At least 15 Britons were among 38 holidaymakers killed in the Tunisian beach massacre as names of those believed to be victims continue to emerge.
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“This is the most significant terrorist attack on British people since 7/7 and highlights the ongoing threat of ISIL”, Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood said on Saturday.
The announcement came after a gunman opened fire on a tourist resort hotel in Sousse city, south of the capital. A bomb was found on his body. “You’ve seen these episodes of attacks, and certainly what you’re seeing here is, I think, another episode where terrorists are trying to impose themselves either from the outside of Tunisia or taking advantage of terrorist operatives that are operating there in Tunisia“.
In Sousse, some foreign tourists were still wading in the sea by the beach where the attack took place.
Mohammed Walid Ben Ghachem, manager of the Enfidha-Hammamet Airport near Sousse told the AP that countries in Europe as well as tour operators sent aircraft to evacuate their citizens.
The ex- Gurkha, from Somerset, said: “Why he did not shoot me, I’ll never know”.
She was on holiday with her partner Scott Chalkley. “It is hard to envision Tunisian tourism recovering from this attack and impossible to envision it recovering from a third one”.
On Saturday night, a large crowd of Tunisians turned out at the hotel in a display of unity after the attacks.
“We hid in there for about forty-five minutes to an hour, I think”, he told the BBC. “We may have zero clients today but we will keep our staff”, he said, adding that the 370-room hotel was three-quarters full before the attack.
“It’s very painful”, said Alya, who lives in nearby Sousse.
He was shot in the leg while his wife had her femur shattered. “Advice is to stay in the hotel and not to venture out”.
Nurse Lorna Carty, from County Meath in Ireland, was shot on the beach just hours before her flight home. Police said they are interrogating a number of suspects with possible links to the bombing, which was claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State group.
The Site Intelligence Group reported that Isis had claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on its Twitter account, referring to the gunman by his jihadi pseudonym Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani. Of the wounded, 25 were British.
The British police are interviewing numerous returning tourists, in particular looking for any footage taken on mobile phones of the incident, and have also sent forensic experts and detectives to Tunisia to help gather evidence.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the attack as a “horrifying and senseless act of violence” and said its perpetrators “do not speak for Muslims”.
In March, 21 people were killed in an attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, all of them tourists apart from a security officer and a cleaning lady.
The presence of a few people still on the beaches a day after the attack does give some glimmers of hope, especially if world memory is short and people return attracted by the low prices and white sands of the beach.
The families of the two Irish citizens who are still missing have been told by government officials in Dublin to expect the worst.
The DFA stressed the formal identification process was still not complete.
Both companies cancelled their holidays to Tunisia for the coming week.
Dozens of members of the security forces have been killed in jihadist attacks since then.
As a result of the Tunisian attack, holidaymakers have been flooding home, with The Guardian reporting that thousands of tourists have already been brought back from Tunisia.
“After this catastrophe, it’s normal that they leave the country so quickly. They were killed”, Brahim told AFP.
The grandmother was in her 60s and lived in Whickham, Gateshead, according to reports.
“The Scottish Government is in contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and we stand ready to offer assistance”.
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A spokeswoman said: “We are immensely saddened by the news about Sue and Scott”. They exploited two years of relative freedom to take control of mosques and spread their propaganda relatively openly, before being outlawed in the aftermath of a mob attack on the United States embassy in September 2012, and two political assassinations in 2013.
