Gunmen storm Tunisian museum, kill 17 foreign tourists

TUNIS (Reuters) — Gunmen wearing military uniforms stormed Tunisia’s national museum on Wednesday, killing 17 foreign tourists and two Tunisians in one of the worst militant attacks in a country that had largely escaped the region’s “Arab Spring” turmoil.

Five Japanese as well as visitors from Italy, Poland and Spain were among the dead in the noon assault on Bardo museum inside the heavily guarded parliament compound in central Tunis, Prime Minister Habib Essid said.

Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid has named two gunmen behind the attack on a museum in the capital that left 19 people dead as Yassine Abidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. The assailants are ‘’probably’’ Tunisian, according to the interior ministry spokesman.

“They just started opening fire on the tourists as they were getting out of the buses ... I couldn’t see anything except blood and the dead,” the driver of a tourist coach told journalists at the scene.

Scores of visitors fled into the museum and the militants - who authorities did not immediately link to any extremist group - took hostages inside, officials said. Security forces entered around two hours later, killed two militants and freed the captives, a government spokesman said. A police officer died in the operation.

The attack on such a high-profile target is a blow for the small North African country that relies heavily on European tourism and has mostly avoided major militant violence since its 2011 uprising to oust autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Several Islamist militant groups have emerged in Tunisia since the uprising, and authorities estimate about 3,000 Tunisians have also joined fighters in Iraq and Syria -- igniting fears they could return and mount attacks at home.

“All Tunisians should be united after this attack which was aimed at destroying the Tunisianeconomy,” Prime Minister Essid declared in a national address.

The local stock exchange dropped nearly 2.5 percent and two German tour operators said they were cancelling trips from Tunisia’s beach resorts to Tunis for a few days.

Accor, Europe’s largest hotel group, said it had tightened security at its two hotels inTunisia.

US Secretary of State John Kerry joined leaders from Europe condemning the attack and said Washington continued “to support the Tunisian government’s efforts to advance a secure, prosperous, and democratic Tunisia.”