IS claims Tunisia massacre

The Islamic State group yesterday claimed responsibility for the Tunisian seaside resort massacre, the worst attack in the country's recent history.

Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said 38 people had been killed, revising down an earlier toll of 39 given by the health ministry. An official there told AFP the original figure had included the dead gunman.

Most of those killed were from Britain -- implying this could be the biggest loss of British life in a militant attack since the July 2005 bombings in London when 52 died -- while Germans, Belgians, French were also among the dead, the premier said.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said earlier five Britons had been killed and he expected the toll to rise, while his Irish counterpart confirmed an Irish woman was among the dead.

Dozens more were wounded when a man pulled a gun from inside a beach umbrella and opened fire on crowds of tourists at the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel in the popular Mediterranean resort of Port el Kantaoui.

The attack, the second against tourists in Tunisia this year, comes on the same day that 27 people were killed at a Shia mosque in Kuwait and a suspected Islamist attacked a factory in France.

IS claimed both the bombing and the attack in Tunisia, which came at the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan and just days before the first anniversary of the group declaring its territory in Iraq and Syria a "caliphate".

IS said the gunman, who they identified as Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani, was a "solider of the caliphate" who had targeted enemies of the jihadist group and "dens (of...) fornication, vice and apostasy".

Most of those killed were "subjects of states that make up the crusader alliance fighting the state of the caliphate", the group said in a statement released on Twitter, referring to the group of countries that have been bombarding its positions in the Middle East.

But an initial investigation by the Tunisian Government identified the attacker as Seifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year-old student who was not previously known to Tunisia's security services.

The gunman dressed in shorts and a T-shirt to disguise himself as a tourist before firing at holidaymakers with a Kalashnikov he had concealed a beach umbrella.

An eyewitness to the massacre told a local radio station the gunman was laughing and “joking around, like a normal guy” as he chose who to shoot.

“Some people, he was saying to them, 'You go away'. He was choosing tourists, British, French,” the witness said. The gunman was shot dead by police.

Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said Rezgui came from Gaafour, a poor town in the Siliana region, and had been a student at the University of Kairouan. He had never left the country and was not known to security services.

Essid offered a cash reward in a news conference yesterday for information leading to the arrests of members of terrorist sleeper cells, reports Independent.co.uk.

Harrowing accounts of the shooting surfaced over night, including video footage showing terrified people fleeing a beach strewn with bodies as gun shots are fired. One British survivor tweeted the moment the gunman stormed the resort and shared pictures from inside his blockaded hotel room.

The attack, along with the killings in France and Kuwait, sparked a chorus of international condemnation with the White House vowing to "fight the scourge of terrorism" and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying those responsible for the "appalling" attacks "must be swiftly brought to justice".

By early morning yesterday, hundreds of tourists were arriving at Enfidha airport in a mad scramble to leave the country, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.

Essid announced new anti-terrorism measures, including the deployment of reserve troops to reinforce security at "sensitive sites... and places that could be targets of terrorist attacks".

The "exceptional plan to better secure tourist and archaeological sites" will include "deploying armed tourist security officers all along the coast and inside hotels from 1 July," he added.

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi told AFP that his country cannot stand up to the jihadist threat alone, and urged a unified global strategy.

Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring, has seen a surge in radical Islam since veteran president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in the 2011 revolution.

Dozens of members of the security forces have been killed in jihadist attacks since then.

In October 2013, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a botched attack on a Sousse beach while security forces foiled another planned attack nearby.

Even before the latest attack, Tunisia's tourism industry had been bracing for a heavy blow from the Bardo shooting, but was determined to attract tourists with new security measures and advertising.