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Tunisia Attack Leaves 27 Dead at Beach Hotel At Least 37 Dead in Terrorist Attack at Tunisia Beach Resort
(34 minutes later)
CAIRO — Two gunmen killed at least 27 people on Friday in an attack on at least one hotel in the Tunisian city of Sousse, Interior Ministry officials said. It was the second major terrorist attack on the country’s tourism industry in about four months. TUNIS — At least one gunman disguised as a vacationer attacked a placid seaside resort in Tunisia on Friday, killing at least 37 people at a beachfront hotel before he was shot to death by security forces. It was the second major terrorist attack on the Tunisian tourist industry in a little more than three months.
The audacity of the assault and the number of victims suggested a sharp escalation from the relatively low-level political violence that has bedeviled the country since its Arab Spring revolt four years ago. The audacity of the assailant, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, suggested a sharp escalation from the relatively low-level political violence that has bedeviled Tunisia since its Arab Spring revolt four years ago.
Interior Ministry officials said Friday afternoon that one of the attackers had been killed in a gunfight with security forces. The other attacker was on the run, officials said. Both were described as having been armed with Kalashnikov rifles, and there were reports of many injuries, suggesting the death toll could grow. Government officials and witnesses offered conflicting accounts of the assault, with some saying that two gunmen, who had possibly come ashore in a rubber dinghy, had ambushed tourists at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse, which is popular with German vacationers.
A news photograph from the scene appeared to show one of the attackers dead, face down on the ground, dressed in black shorts and a black short sleeve shirt, with his rifle next to him. Others said that there was a single gunman but that the police were searching for possible accomplices. There were unconfirmed reports that the violence extended to a second hotel.
A video from Jawhara FM, a Tunisian radio station, showed victims of the attack in Sousse arriving by ambulance at a nearby medical facility. Twenty people were wounded in the attack, including five British tourists, who were being treated at a city hospital, Tunisian news media reported. The nationalities of the other victims were not immediately clear.
The motives and identity of the attackers were not immediately clear. But the Tunisian authorities have struggled to suppress a small but violent hard-line Islamist insurgency that has sprung up in the years since the uprising that forced out President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and set off the Arab Spring political upheavals. No group claimed responsibility in the hours after the attack. The Tunisian authorities have struggled to suppress a small but violent Islamist insurgency that has sprung up in the four years since the uprising that forced out the former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and set off the Arab Spring.
The Sousse attack came just four months after three Islamist gunmen killed more than 20 people, almost all of them tourists, in a mass shooting at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis. But Islamist extremist groups have been threatening attacks against the Tunisian government, its security forces and its institutions for months. They have frequently mounted attacks against police and army units over the past two years, but appeared to turn their focus recently to the tourism industry, which offers easy targets and is vital to the Tunisian economy.
The attack on Friday took place in the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse, an affluent resort town on the coast that was also Mr. Ben Ali’s former hometown. There were reports that the violence may have extended into a second hotel, but they could not be immediately confirmed. The attack in Sousse, Mr. Ben Ali’s hometown, comes just over three months after two gunmen killed more than 20 people, almost all of them foreign tourists, in a mass shooting at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis. The two men had been radicalized in Tunisia and trained in an Islamist militant camp in Libya in the weeks before the attack.
In Sousse, the assailant who was killed wore black shorts and a T-shirt, and his body lay sprawled on the street, his assault rifle beside him. He dressed as a tourist and carried the rifle concealed in an umbrella, said Rafik Chelli, secretary of state for the Interior Ministry. The police identified him as a young Tunisian from the town of Kairouan with no prior police record, Mr. Chelli said.
The tourism minister, Salma Elloumi, who has worked conspicuously to support the industry and encourage foreign visitors, said on national radio that the Sousse attack was a “catastrophe” for Tunisia.
Legislators immediately called for new measures to stop such attacks. The leader of the Popular Front movement, Hama Hammami, called the Sousse assault a “hideous crime” that was aimed at terrorizing Tunisians. Two politicians with the Popular Front were assassinated in 2013 by Islamist extremists.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, condemned the attack on the resort as “cowardly” and expressed his sympathy to the families of the “many people we must expect will be victims of this attack.”
Several German tour companies offer vacation packages to the Imperial Marhaba Hotel, but the Foreign Ministry had no immediate information about whether any of its citizens were among the victims. A spokesman said the German Embassy in Tunis was in “close contact” with the Tunisian authorities.