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Agencies

Tunisia’s prime minister has named two gunmen accused of carrying out a deadly "terror" attack on a national museum which left 20 foreign tourists and three Tunisians dead.
Prime Minister Habib Essid said in an interview with RTL radio today that the attackers were identified as Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. He said Laabidi had been flagged to intelligence, although not for “anything special”.

But no formal links to a particular terror group have been established, Essid said, and Tunisia is working with other countries to learn more information about the gunmen.
More than 40 people were wounded after gunmen, dressed in military uniforms, opened fire on the tourists as they got off a bus then chased them inside the National Bardo Museum in the capital Tunis.
President Beij Caid Essebsi vowed Tunisia would wage a “merciless war against terrorism”.
“I want the Tunisian people to understand that we are in a war against terrorism and that these savage minorities do not frighten us,” said Essebsi, who visited some of the dozens being treated for wounds in a Tunis hospital.
Though no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, Essid said there was a “possibility” that the gunmen could have accomplices, and that authorities were “conducting extensive search operations to identify the two or three terrorists who possibly participated in the operation”.
Among the dead were three Japanese, four Italians, two Colombians and one each from Australia, France, Poland and Spain.
WATCH: Gunmen storm Tunisian museum in deadly attack

The two Colombians killed on Wednesday were a mother and child who were enjoying a family holiday. The father survived, the foreign ministry in Bogota said.
A Tunisian bus driver and a policeman were also reported dead in the attack on the Bardo, famed for its collection of ancient artefacts.
An expert on extremism told the Associated Press that Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State group voiced elation at the attack on a Tunisian museum that left at least 22 people dead.
Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist and extremist websites, said on Wednesday on Twitter that Islamic State accounts are applauding the attack on the Bardo museum and putting out “calls for Tunisians to ‘follow their brothers.”
READ MORE: Three Japanese tourists among 19 killed as gunmen open fire on Tunisian museum
Essid said at least 44 people were wounded, among them: 13 Italians, seven French, four Japanese, two South Africans, one Pole, one Russian and six Tunisians. Two British people were also “caught up” in the firefight, the foreign office said, without giving further details.
Tunisian interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told reporters that “two or more terrorists armed with Kalashnikovs” had targeted the museum, while about 100 tourists were inside. Poland’s prime minister Ewa Kopacz said some of the Polish victims were on a tour bus in front of the building when the gunmen started shooting.

It took four hours for anti-terror units to secure the area after “intense gunfire” around noon. Some museum employees and visitors were able to escape.
“My co-workers were screaming ‘Run! Run! Shots are being fired!’” she told AFP. “We escaped out the back door with co-workers and some tourists.”
French tourist Fabienne recounted how she and others hid in one of the museum’s galleries along with their guide.
“We couldn’t see anything, but there must have been a lot of them. We were afraid that, at any moment, they would come kill us,” she told France’s BFM television.
Spanish eyewitness Josep Lluis Cusido – the mayor of a small Spanish town in Vallmoll – said he and his wife hid behind a pillar inside Bardo when the gunmen stormed the site. They spent three hours inside the museum until they got out, unscathed.
Cusido said he watched in horror as people were shot dead on the spot.
“We saw a bunch of people leaving a vehicle and they started shooting everyone walking down the plaza at that moment,” he said. “After they entered the museum. I saw their faces: They were about 10 metres away from me, shooting at anything that moved.”

“I managed to hide behind a pillar, there were unlucky people who they killed right there. I was lying on the floor almost three hours but our lives were saved,” Cusido said.
Work was suspended at nearby parliament during the attack.
“There was enormous panic,” lawmaker Sayida Ounissi wrote on Twitter, saying hearings on Tunisia’s anti-terrorism law were taking place at the time.
One Japanese survivor described how she and her mother were shot in the hail of bullets. “I was crouching down with my arms over my head, but I was shot in the ear, hand and neck,” 35-year-old Noriko Yuki told NHK news from her hospital bed.
“My mother beside me was shot in the neck. Mother couldn’t move by herself when the police came over,” she said.
Many of the visitors had joined tour groups. Some of the Italians in the museum were believed to have been passengers aboard the Costa Fascinosa, a cruise liner making a seven-day trip of the western Mediterranean that had docked in Tunis.
The attack appeared to be the worst on foreigners in Tunisia since an al-Qaeda suicide bombing of a synagogue killed 14 Germans, two French and five Tunisians on the island of Djerba in 2002.

It sparked outrage, with hundreds of people gathering later in a major thoroughfare of the capital, singing the national anthem and shouting slogans against the attackers, labelling them terrorists.
Tunisia has seen an upsurge in Islamist extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Dozens of police and military personnel have been killed or wounded in attacks blamed on Islamist militants.
An army offensive against the jihadists, who are linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has been under way since 2012 but the ground and air campaign has failed to eliminate them.
The country is also fighting against the radicalisation of Muslim youth. Authorities say as many as 3,000 Tunisians have gone to Iraq, Syria and neighbouring Libya to fight in jihadist ranks, including with the Islamic State group.
Some 500 jihadists are believed to have since returned home.


Gunmen ‘shot anything that moved’ in Tunisia museum terror attack, say survivors

Paramedics and doctors help a wounded man onto an ambulance after the shooting attack at Tunis's National Bardo Museum. Photo: Xinhua

Security is beefed up at parliament, near the site of the attack on Wednesday. Parliament was deliberating an anti-terror bill when the attack happened, said one lawmaker. Photo: Reuters

An unnamed Japanese survivor of the Tunis attack gets treatment at hospital. At least three Japanese nationals were among those killed. Photo: Kyodo

More than 40 people were left wounded after military uniform-clad attackers opened fire on tour buses and chased hostages into the museum. Photo: Xinhua

Three Japanese tourists among 19 killed as gunmen open fire on Tunisian museum 

Tunisian security forces secure the area after gunmen attacked Tunis' famed Bardo Museum. Photo: AFP

An image taken by one of the hostages inside the Bardo Museum. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Members of the Tunisian armed forces take up positions outside the National Bardo Museum. Photo: EPA

Gunmen reportedly took hostages near the country's parliament. Photo: EPA

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World

Islamic State posts elated messages after attack in Tunis that left 21 people dead


Tunisia’s prime minister has named two gunmen accused of carrying out a deadly "terror" attack on a national museum which left 20 foreign tourists and three Tunisians dead.


New | Gunmen ‘shot anything that moved’ in Tunisia museum terror attack, say survivors

Islamic State posts elated messages after attack in Tunis that left 21 people dead