Tunisia fears terror attack’s worst casualty is tourism
TUNIS, Tunisia — Thousands of tourists fled from Tunisia on Saturday after the country’s worst terrorist attack killed at least 38 people — including 15 Britons — as the government struggles to prevent future jihadi attacks against the all-important tourism sector.
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.
New measures in Tunisia to increase the numbers of troops on the streets and crack down on organizations with radical links, however, won’t bring the tourists back in the shortterm, further threatening the fragile economy.
When a 24-year-old student at Kairouan University strolled onto the Sousse beach and pulled out a Kalashnikov assault rifle and grenades hidden inside his beach umbrella, he was sounding the death knell for Tunisia’s 2015 tourist season.
Tunisian authorities identified the attacker as Seifeddine Rezgui.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been on holiday and feared for my life,” said British tourist Matthew Preece, adding it was his third time visiting Tunisia and likely his last. “So obviously you can’t come back somewhere it’s not safe.”
In France, the top suspect in the beheading of a businessman that French authorities are calling a terrorist attack took a “selfie” with the slain victim and sent the image via WhatsApp to a Canadian mobile phone number, officials said.
The revelation added a macabre twist to an investigation that has not turned up a solid link to radical or foreign groups, but has revived concerns about terrorism in France less than six months after deadly tacks in the Paris area.
Top suspect Yassine Salhi, a truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties, as well as his sister and wife, remained in police custody
at- in the city of Lyon, a day after he allegedly crashed a truck into a U.S.-owned chemical warehouse and hung his employer’s severed head on a factory gate, officials said. No group claimed responsibility.
The severed head appeared to mimic Islamic State’s practice of beheading prisoners and displaying their heads, and came days after the militants urged attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. French authorities say Salhi had links to radical Salafists in the past.
In Kuwait, thousands of people in Kuwait City took part in a mass funeral procession Saturday for the people killed in an attack against a Shiite mosque in the capital a day earlier.
A local affiliate of the Islamic State group, calling itself the Najd Province, claimed responsibility for the attack by a suicide bomber during midday Friday prayers inside one of Kuwait ’s oldest Shiite mosques.
The Islamic State group views Shiites as heretics and refers to them as “rejectionists.”