One of the gunmen who killed tourists and others at a prominent Tunisian museum was known to the intelligence services, but no formal links to a particular extremist group have been established, Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essidsaid yesterday.
The attack on Wednesday on Tunisia’s National Bardo Museum left 23 dead, scores wounded and threatens both the nation’s fledgling democracy and its struggling tourism industry.
Razor wire ringed the Bardo Museum yesterday and security forces guarded major thoroughfares in Tunis, the capital, as authorities hunted for two or three more people believed to have been involved in the attack. Two of the gunmen were killed on Wednesday by police.
Photo: EPA
The attack spells oceans of trouble for the tourism industry, which brings throngs of foreigners every year to Tunisia’s Mediterranean beaches, desert oases and ancient Roman ruins — and which had just started to recover after years of slump.
A Spanish man and a pregnant Spanish woman who had been inside the museum during the attack hid in the building all night in fear and were retrieved safely yesterday morning by security forces, Tunisian Minister of Health Said Aidi said.
He said the death toll rose yesterday to 23 people, including 18 foreign tourists, with almost 50 people wounded. Five Tunisians were killed, including the two attackers.
Aidi said all the injuries came from bullet wounds and that several victims were brought in without identity documents.
Moncef Hamdoun, an official with Charles Nicolle hospital where many of the victims were taken, said seven of the dead remain unidentified. He listed the others who were slain as three Japanese women, a Spanish man and a Spanish woman, a Colombian woman, an Australian man, a British woman, a Belgian woman, a Frenchman and a Polish man.
Essid, in an interview with France’s RTL radio, said Tunisia was working with other nations to learn more about the attackers, identified as Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. They were killed by security services in a raid.
He said Laabidi had been flagged to intelligence, although not for “anything special.”
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