Tunisia pledges tough security post-attack, as tourists flee

Tunisia’s prime minister announced on Saturday a string of new security measures including closing renegade mosques and calling up army reservists as thousands of tourists fled the North African country in wake of its worst terrorist attack ever. Tourists crowded into the airport at Hammamet near the coastal city of Sousse where a young man dressed in shorts on Friday pulled an assault rifle and grenades out of his beach umbrella and killed 38 people, mostly tourists. At least 15 victims were British, according to the U.K. foreign minister. Tobias Ellwood warned that the toll “may well rise” and described it as the most “significant terrorist attack on the British people,” since the July 2005 bombings of the London transport network that killed 52 people.

The fight against terrorism is a national responsibility. We are at war against terrorism which represents a serious danger to national unity during this delicate period that the nation is going through.

Prime Minister Habib Essid

The attack came the same day that a suicide bomber killed 27 people in a Shiite mosque in Kuwait and a man in France ran his truck into a warehouse and hung his employer’s severed head on the gate. The government has been criticized for its lackluster anti-terror measures, especially since 22 people were killed by gunmen at the national museum in March. There was also been a failed suicide bomb attack in Sousse in 2013. The attacker, who was killed by security forces, was identified as Seifeddine Rezgui, a young student at Kairouan University. A tweet from the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack and gave his jihadi pseudonym of Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani, according to the SITE intelligence group.

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