Tunisia makes beach attack arrests

PORT EL KANTAOUI—Tunisia said on Monday it had made its first arrests after a beach massacre that killed 38 people, as European officials paid tribute to victims of the country’s worst ever jihadist attack.

Tunisia’s Interior Minister Najem Gharsalli said the authorities had arrested “a significant number of people from the network that was behind this terrorist” attack on a popular tourist resort in Port El Kantaoui.

“I promise the victims... that these criminal killers will be brought before Tunisian justice so they are justly punished,” he added, warning that “anyone who provided any logistical or financial assistance” to the attacker would be arrested.

On Friday, a Tunisian identified as 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from inside a beach umbrella and went on a bloody rampage at the five-star Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba near Sousse, south of the capital Tunis.

Visiting the scene of the attack where up to 30 British people are thought to have died on Monday, British Home Secretary Theresa May pledged to “defeat those who undermine our freedom and democracy” and vowed that “the terrorists will not win.”

She and counterparts from Tunisia, Germany and France laid a wreath at the beach to honor those killed in the attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State group.

The massacre was the deadliest for Britain since the 2005 London bombings, but May said there was no evidence to suggest the Britons were targeted because of their nationality.

The attack, the second against tourists in Tunisia this year, sent thousands of holidaymakers fleeing the country and sparked fears it could deal a heavy blow to the vital sector which employs some 400,000 people.

Late Monday, Tourism Minister Selma Elloumi Rekik told reporters she feared Tunisia might lose a billion dinars ($515 million, 460 million euros) in tourism earnings this year.

“I think that’s just the minimum, but it’s still an estimate,” she told reporters, announcing a string of emergency measures aimed at attracting visitors from abroad and emergency loans to help local tourism businesses.

“If tourism collapses... the economy falls apart.”

Shocking amateur footage from the attack has emerged on social media, showing the gunman walking calmly along the shore and bloodied bodies on the sand.