PORT EL KANTAOUI, Tunisia – Thousands of scared foreign
holidaymakers were being flown from Tunisia on Saturday (Jun 27) after a
militant gunman killed 38 people, most of them British tourists, at a beach
resort.
The Islamic State militant group, which controls swathes of
Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in
Tunisia’s recent history.
Dozens more people
were wounded when the assailant pulled a gun from inside a beach umbrella and
opened fire on crowds of tourists on the beach and by a hotel pool in the
popular Mediterranean resort of Port el Kantaoui.
Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid announced that from next
month armed tourist security officers would be deployed all along the coast and
inside hotels.
- But a heavy blow had already been delivered to the key tourism industry with British tour operator Thomas Cook announcing it would offer all customers the possibility to change bookings to Tunisia up to and including Jul 24.
- The Association of British Travel Agents said it was consulting with the Foreign Office about the longer term.
- The Tunisian prime minister said that most of the dead were British but that they also included Germans, Belgians and French.
- The attack, the second against tourists in Tunisia this year, came on the same day that 26 people were killed at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait and a suspected militant attacked a factory in France.
IS claimed both the Kuwait bombing and the Tunisia attack,
which came just days before the first anniversary of the group declaring its
territory in Iraq and Syria a “caliphate”.
Most of those killed were “subjects of states that make up
the crusader alliance fighting the state of the caliphate”, the group said,referring to the US-led
coalition in an air campaign in Iraq
and Syria.
coalition in an air campaign in Iraq
and Syria.
Source: Adelaide Now...More...
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