SOUSSE, Tunisia: Hundreds of armed police patrolled the streets of Tunisia’s beach resorts on Sunday and the government said it will deploy hundreds more inside hotels after the Islamist militant attack in Sousse that killed 39 foreigners, mostly Britons.
Thousands of tourists have left Tunisia since Friday’s attack, which has shocked the North African country that relies heavily on tourism for jobs and foreign currency revenues.
Britain’s Foreign Office warned late on Saturday that Islamist militants may launch further attacks in Tunisia after a gunman opened fire on the Imperial Marhaba resort in the deadliest such attack in Tunisia’s modern history.
At least 15 Britons were among the dead and wounded along with German, Irish and Belgian nationals in Sousse. The health ministry says at least 40 people were wounded without giving any details of their nationalities.
“We are going to deploy 1,000 armed police to protect hotels and tourists,” Tunisian Interior Minister Najem Gharsalli told reporters late on Saturday night.
Since its 2011 uprising to oust Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has made a peaceful transition to democracy with a new constitution and free elections. It is seen as a model for the region.
But its young democracy has also been tested by the rise of hard-line Islamist movements, some of which have turned to violence. The army has been fighting a campaign against pockets of Islamist militants near the Algerian border.
State news agency TAP said gunmen raided houses for food in El Kef, a northeastern city about 160 km (100 miles) from the coast and 40 km from the Algerian border, before heading to the mountains that separate the two countries. TAP gave no further details.
Islamic State has claimed the Sousse attack. But officials say the gunman, named as Saif Rezgui, was not any watchlist of known potential militants. One source said he appeared to have been radicalized over the last six months by recruiters.
It was the second major attack in Tunisia this year, following an Islamist militant assault on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March when gunmen killed a group of foreign visitors as they arrived by bus.
The tourism minister has described the Sousse attack as a catastrophe for the industry, which accounts for about seven percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
“Germans, French and British officials informed us they would not prevent tourists from coming to Tunisia, but they want to participate in the investigation and to see clear security decisions,” tourism minister, Salma Loumi, told reporters on Sunday.
“We will receive all ambassadors on Tuesday to inform them of all security measures taken to protect tourists,” she said.
Loumi noted that many British tourists had decided to stay in Tunisia until the end of their holidays.
More than 3,000 tourists had already left the country a day after the attack.
“Tunisia is a beautiful country, and we will come back, but right now we need to leave, we need to forget what happened,” said Lucy, a young British tourist leaving from a local airport near Sousse. “It’s clear it is not safe here at the moment.”
Islamist jihadists have attacked North African tourist sites before, seeing them as legitimate targets because they allow for a Western way of life and are tolerant of alcohol. Tunisia is one of the most secular countries in the Arab world.
Prime Minister Habib Essid said his government plans within a week to close down 80 mosques that remain outside state control, for inciting violence, and crack down on financing for certain associations, in order to counter jihadi rectruiters.
(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara)
Cops swarm Tunisian tourist towns after massacre
Cops swarm Tunisian tourist towns after massacre
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
- US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
- US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, and struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran, the commander of the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command’s Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X.
Cooper said the US military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from US ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the US is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said, adding that the US military is targeting “all the things that can shoot at us.”
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in the video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
Iran‘s response
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Iranian attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in the Gulf region, according to various reports quoting local authorities.
Among the latest death was an 11-year-old girl who was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the UK military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
Drone downed near Baghdad airport
In Baghdad, a drone was shot down on Wednesday near Baghdad’s international airport, a day after a similar attack on the facility, two security sources told AFP.
“A drone was downed near Baghdad airport, with no casualties or material damage reported,” an Iraqi security source said. Another security source in Baghdad confirmed the incident.
The airport includes a military base that hosts a US diplomatic facility and previously housed US-led coalition troops.
