Gunmen kill at least 28 at Tunisian beachside hotel

Officials say one gunman has been shot dead and another is being pursued.

|
Amine Ben Aziza/Reuters
Police officers control the crowd while surrounding a man suspected to be involved in opening fire on a beachside hotel in Sousse, Tunisia, as a woman reacts.

Gunmen killed at least 28 people and injured 36 in an attack on a beachside hotel in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse, according to the national health minister. Most victims were British and German tourists, according to The Associated Press.

Officials say one gunman has been shot dead and another is being pursued.

Steve Johnson, a resident at the Imperial Marhaba hotel, gave The Guardian an eyewitness account.

He said: “We were just laying on the beach as usual... and we heard what at first we thought was fireworks but it was soon pretty obvious that that it was not fireworks, it was firearms being discharged, and people screaming and starting to run from along the beach towards us.”

A hotel worker said one attacker “was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself.”

Local radio Jawhara FM said one of the terrorists was wearing a police uniform as a disguise.

According to The Telegraph, the arrested gunman was a local student. Rafik Chelli, Tunisia’s secretary of State for national security, said he came from the beach, hiding his Kalashnikov under an umbrella before opening fire on tourists.

Five British citizens are among 10 people taken to Sahloul Hospital, hospital director Chawki Jebali told Mosaique FM.

The hashtag #JeSuisKantoui is trending on Twitter. Kantaoui is the tourist complex targeted by the gunmen.

It was the second major attack in Tunisia this year. In March, at least 23 people died when gunmen stormed the Bardo Museum. ISIS claimed responsibility for the incident.

Friday's deadly attack could also be trouble for Tunisia’s tourism industry, which comprises 15.2 percent of the nation’s GDP and employs 473,000 citizens – 13.8 percent of the total workforce. In 2014, Tunisia, hosted 6.1 million tourists.

The Tunisian assault happened the same day as terrorist attacks at a factory in France and a Shiite mosque in Kuwait. 

The Monitor's Dan Murphy analyzes the three tragedies:

Are these attacks connected? While it's hard to imagine central coordination for attacks staged on the same day on three continents, central inspiration may be another matter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Gunmen kill at least 28 at Tunisian beachside hotel
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2015/0626/Gunmen-kill-at-least-28-at-Tunisian-beachside-hotel
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe