IS say Tunisian gunman who killed 39 tourists is a ‘soldier of the caliphate’

Islamic State described Seifeddine Rezgui, the apprentice electrician who shot dead 38 people, most of them foreign tourists, in a beach resort near Sousse on Friday, as a "soldier of the caliphate". Rezgui fulfilled his goal "of killing foreigners, most of whom were subjects of the crusader alliance that is fighting the caliphate", said the statement released on Twitter.

Survivors recount how Rezgui carefully targeted tourists, telling Tunisians in his path “Get away. Get away. I have nothing against you.” The gunmen who killed 22 people at the Bardo museum in March made the same selection.

Even after the Bardo attack, the hotels on Kantawi beach employed a sole, unarmed security guard on their seafronts. Since Friday, hotel waiters have been kitted out in new uniforms and assigned to work as security guards on the beach. The beach is reportedly teeming with armed, plaincothes policemen, though they’re not easily spotted. A few clutches of Tunisian army soldiers are deployed on the road on the inland side of the hotels, outnumbered by television cameras.

Traumatised by the massacre, tired and fraught from the Ramadan fast, most of the hotel staff remain incredibly friendly. But perhaps out of frustration at having stood helplessly by as Rezgui massacred the hotel clients, twice reloading his Kalashnikov, security guards are taking it out on foreign journalists. A guard at the Bellevue Park, next door to the ill-fated Imperial Marhaba, told me the anti-terrorist law forbade allowing journalists into hotels. An equally cantankerous guard at the Imperial Marhaba forcibly removed me from the hotel garden.

Security measures

Foreign observers say the Tunisian government was in denial over the extent of the jihadist threat, even after 21 foreigners and a Tunisian were killed at the Bardo. Prime minister Habib Essid announced what were presented as 12 new security measures on Saturday night. These include “opening an investigation into the attack in Sousse”, shutting down 80 mosques which are “out of control”, transforming the mountainous area near the Algerian border in northwestern

Algeria

into a military zone, using military reserves to strengthen security forces, armed patrols inside and outside hotels, rewards to informers on jihadist activities and “concentration with all political parties to achieve real national unity”.

Some politicians talk of building a barbed wire fence along Tunisia's southeastern border with Libya, where Islamist factions are locked in civil war. In the Tunisian market town of Gafsa, one can buy a Kalashnikov for 700 dinars, about €350.

The moderate Islamist party Ennahda, which ruled Tunisia from October 2011 until January 2014, strongly condemned the beach massacre. But many secular Tunisians accuse Ennahda of having prepared the way for Islamic State. The first attack on foreign tourists in Tunisia occurred in hotels in Sousse and nearby Monastir in 1987, and was carried out by members of the Islamist MIT party, a precursor of Ennahda.

Empty airport

At least 2,000 tourists left Tunisia through Enfidha, the shiny new airport that was built for charter tour operators, over the weekend. Now the airport is empty. The faces of departing Polish tourists are tense and worried.

Mohamed Walid Ben Ghachem, the commander of the airport, said more than 22 additional flights were scheduled between Friday and Sunday, one of them an ambulance aircraft to carry wounded British tourists. Yet five of the 20 charters, with a total capacity of 1,400, returned empty to Europe because tourists preferred to stay in Tunisia.

Like many of his compatriots, Ben Ghachem insisted that Seifeddine Rezgui “is not a Tunisian. We’re ashamed to have someone like that among us.” The airport official begged me to encourage Irish people to visit Tunisia. “Tunisia is a warm and friendly place that has always loved tourists,” he said.

Some 3,000 young Tunisians – the highest number of any country – have gone to Iraq and Syria to fight with Islamic State. "They're not only joining from Tunisia," said Sabri Hamdi, a businessman who travelled 250 miles with a delegation to place flowers on the beach in tribute to the dead tourists. "They're joining from France, Germany, the US too. This is a contagious disease and we cannot fight it alone. . . Americans and Europeans must come to Tunisia. They mustn't leave Tunisia alone."