Gunmen opened fire on a beach popular with tourists in Tunisia on Friday, killing at least 28 people, the country’s interior ministry said.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry told NBC News that most of the victims were foreigners and that at least six people had been injured in the attack on the beaches of Sousse. The ministry said that one gunman had been killed and a second captured following a security-forces operation in the popular seaside resort.
The deadly assault came just hours after an apparent terror attack on a factory in France. French President Francois Hollande telephoned Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi to express solidarity in light of the Sousse attack, according to Hollande’s office.
The nationalities of the victims were not immediately clear, but Sousse is popular with German and British nationals. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the “cowardly assassination attack against tourists” but said he did not know if any of his countrymen were among the victims.
Gary Pine, a product manager from the U.K., told NBC News he was one of dozens of vacationers on the beach when the attack took place not far from his hotel, the El Mouradi Palm Marina. He said he initially thought he was hearing firecrackers but that “it was only when you could hear the bullets whizzing through the air that we realized it was gunfire.” His 22-year-old son saw one person get shot, Pine added.
He said guests started running off the beach and were told to go to their rooms by hotel staff, he said. Some guests ran back out onto the beach to get their room keys, he added. British holidaymaker Karen Hillman said she was near her hotel’s pool when other guests started rushing toward the building “like a stampede.” She said: “Everyone was told to get inside the hotel and into the rooms.”
