International
At least 37 people were killed Friday in an attack by a gunman on a beach and hotel in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse, a Tunisian Health Ministry spokesman said.
“A terrorist infiltrated the buildings from the back before opening fire on the residents of the hotel, including foreigners and Tunisians,” said Interior Ministry Spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui.
British, German and Belgian nationals were among the dead, the Tunisian health ministry reported. Another 36 people were wounded in the attack, including up to three people who are in critical condition.
Aroui said the gunman “was killed during an exchange of fire with security forces.” The assailant, who was described by a top security official as a young student, was not previously known to authorities.
"Once again, cowardly and traitorous hands have struck Tunisia, targeting its security and that of its children and visitors," President Beji Caid Essebsi told reporters at the Imperial Marhaba hotel, near the beach rampage site.
Essebsi promised "painful but necessary" measures, adding: "No country is safe from terrorism, and we need a global strategy of all democratic countries."
Initial reports stated that there were two gunmen involved in the attack, but a security official later confirmed that there was only one.
The carnage in Sousse, located about 95 miles from the capital city Tunis, began on the beach, where tourists described hearing what sounded like fireworks and then running for their lives when they realized it was gunfire.
Gary Pine, a product manager from Bristol in southwest England visiting Sousse, said he heard an estimated 20 to 30 shots before tourists ran to their hotels for cover.
“Over to our left, about 100 yards or so away, we saw what we thought was firecrackers going off,” he told Britain's Sky News television by telephone.
“But you could see quite quickly the panic that was starting to ensue from the next resort along from us,“ Pine said. “People were exiting the beach pretty quick.”
Security official Rafik Chelli confirmed the gunman used a hidden automatic rifle.
"He had a parasol in his hand. He went down to put it in the sand and then he took out his Kalashnikov and began shooting wildly," said Chelli.
The gunman then entered the pool area of the Imperial Marhaba hotel before moving into the building, killing people as he went.
Video footage of the aftermath showed medics using beach chairs as stretchers to carry away people in swimsuits.
Sousse is one of Tunisia's most popular beach destinations, drawing tourists from Europe and neighboring countries.
Riadh Guerfali, political commentator and founder of popular Tunisian blog Nawaat.org, told Al Jazeera that the country’s dependence on tourism makes it vulnerable to such attacks.
"Until today, years after the Arab Spring, if there's anything that even slightly scratches the tourism industry, it rocks the entire country,” he said. “It's such a mistake to premise the entire economy on a single sector."
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchins from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London agreed that the resort attack should “probably be seen as an attempt to destabilize the economy as well as the wider political situation in Tunisia.”
“We have people relaxing on the beach on their holidays being murdered — that is not going to help the attempts by the Tunisian tourist industry to get people to come to the country,” he said, adding that similar attacks had earlier damaged tourism in Egypt and Kenya.
Tunisia has been on high alert since March when gunmen attacked the Bardo museum in Tunis, killing a group of foreign tourists in one of the country’s worst attacks in a decade.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for that attack.
Al Jazeera and wire services. Massoud Hayoun contributed to this report.
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