As tourists flee, Tunisia mulls security approach

Associated Press

TUNIS, TUNISIA

Thousands of tourists fled from Tunisia on Saturday after the country’s worst terrorist attack killed 38 people – including 15 Britons – as the government struggles to prevent future jihadi attacks against the all-important tourism sector.

New measures to increase the numbers of troops on the streets and crack down on organizations with radical links, however, won’t bring the tourists back in the short-term, further threatening the fragile economy.

When a 24-year-old Master’s student at Kairouan University strolled on to the Sousse beach and pulled out a Kalashnikov assault rifle and grenades hidden inside his beach umbrella, he was sounding the death knell for Tunisia’s 2015 tourist season.

Tunisian authorities identified the attacker as Seifeddine Rezgui, saying he killed 38 people, 15 of them British, as well as German, Irish, Belgian and Portuguese victims, and sent thousands of tourists fleeing to airports. The wounded included 24 Britons, seven Tunisians, three Belgians, and a German, Russian and Ukrainian.

European countries and tour operators sent planes to evacuate their citizens. By midday Saturday, nine flights had whisked away 1,400 people, according to Mohammed Walid Ben Ghachem, manager of the Enfidha-Hammamet Airport near Sousse.

At the Imperial Marhaba Hotel itself, the guests had left, according to manager Mohammed Becheur.

On the beach, there were a few tourists from nearby hotels. Some laid flowers at the site of the attack while police patrolling on horseback moved down the beach and security boats patrolled the waters.

Armed men on the beach may well become a more common sight in Tunisia, as Prime Minister Habib Essid announced a raft of new security measures. Many have questioned why they weren’t implemented after the last horrific attack against tourists in March at the National Bardo Museum that killed 22.

Essid called up the army reserves and said there would now be armed men in the hotels and at tourists sites, and he also promised to crack down on unregulated mosques that preached extremist ideas and close down organizations with shadowy funding and extremist links.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the radical Islamic State group, which thousands of Tunisians, disaffected with the lack of opportunity in the wake of the 2011 overthrow of secular President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, have joined.