Tourists fled a Tunisian seaside resort on Saturday, a day after an attack killed at least 38 people and wounded at least 36 others.
A stream of buses quietly ferried out thousands of guests who abruptly ended their beach holidays in the coastal city of Sousse.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack that started on the beach outside the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba, but it wasn’t clear if the Islamist group had any direct role in it.
The gunman
ISIS posted a photo of the alleged attacker, Abu Yahya al-Qirawani, but people who were at the scene of the shooting told CNN they could not definitively say whether the gunman they saw is the same man featured in the ISIS photo.
That gunman has now been identified by Tunisian authorities as Saif Al-Deen Al Rezgui, age 24.
The uncle of Al Rezgui told CNN his nephew had visited his hometown and parent’s home in Gaafour, Tunisia, on Thursday, the day before the attack.
On Friday evening the mother and father of Al Rezgui were taken from their home to Tunis for investigation purposes, according to the uncle.
Al Rezgui lived in Gaafour until 2011 and later moved to the nearby region of Kairouan to go to college. Police officials described him as a normal young man who participated in a music group while he lived in Gaafour.
Police said that while Al Rezgui was in Gaafour, he was not known to have problems and was seen as an introvert who came from a poor family. Police added that his younger brother died in 2010 when he was struck by lightning, a death they believe this may have affected Al Rezgui.
Initial reports Friday about the attack suggested there had been three gunmen, but a Tunisian Interior Ministry spokesman later said they were aware of only one and that he had been killed.
The spokesman, Mohammed Ali Aroui, told CNN on Saturday that the gunman specialized in electronics in pursuing his masters degree and didn’t have any known relationship with a terror group
He worked in the past for an entertainment organization involved in tourism, and this is thought to be how he knew about the hotel layout, Aroui said. It is not yet clear what his current job was, if he had one, the spokesman added.
His first passport was issued in 2013 but there was no sign of foreign travel on it, he said.
Two U.S. officials said they believe the attack may have been inspired by ISIS, though not directed by the terrorist group.
It started on the beach
The attack unfolded over about five minutes, starting on the beach, continuing at the pool and in the hotel lobby, and ending when the gunman was killed in the hotel’s parking lot, according to Aroui.
Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said the gunman hid an AK-47 machine gun under an umbrella to smuggle it onto the beach.
British tourist Ellie Makin watched him carry it.
“A guy had walked onto the beach and had dropped what I’d seen as an umbrella and underneath (it) was a massive gun of some sort and it was like in the army,” she said.
“He was just firing left and right and center. I got up quick as possible … and shouted, ‘Run, there is a gun.'”
A British man wounded in the arm described running into the sea to escape.
“I heard someone firing a gun and then I looked at my wife, and she got up and ran,” the man, whose name wasn’t given, told Tunisia’s Watania 1 TV.
“As I turned, the bullet just hit me in my arm. … My wife ran to the hotel, and I just saw the gunman firing shots randomly at people laying on the sunbeds on the beach.”
Survivor: I was lucky
Speaking to CNN from a hospital bed in Sousse, 76-year-old Ukrainian vacationer Nadezhda Vasilievna gave a chilling account of how she was shot as she lay on the beach.
“My husband went to swim, and I was lying and reading the newspaper by the sea. Suddenly I heard an explosion,” she said.
“I saw the man running and shooting. He shot at us. For those who moved, he fired again. I looked where he pointed the gun. When he aimed the weapon in my side, I felt a kick. The bullet went right through my soft tissues.”
She watched, stunned, as the gunman — whose appearance she can’t recall except that he was dressed in black — carried on firing. Those who were standing or sitting, rather than lying down, were in the center of the beach or were closest to the water bore the brunt of the attack, she said.
“I was lucky,” Vasilievna said. “I had no fear. It was like a movie. I just watched him and tried to deceive him. I just lost a lot of blood.”
After the rampage ended, she was helped to a medical unit in the hotel and then on to the hospital.
Her husband, Igor Vladimirovich, age 78, said he’d watched in disbelief from the water as the attack unfolded. “The terrorist fired almost without stopping. He moved quickly,” he said.
Like his wife, Vladimirovich felt no fear. “There was no time to analyze. We had to just do something at that moment,” he said.
The pair are due to fly home shortly from what was their second trip to Tunisia.
On its website, Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba is described as an all-inclusive hotel with views of Port El Kantaoui on the Mediterranean Sea.
The dead
On Saturday, authorities began transferring the bodies from Sousse to the capital, Tunis, the Ministry of Health said.
“The nationalities of the killed, most of them are British, German, and French, this is the 95% of them,” according to Prime Minister Essid. “The majority of them are British, then the second in number were German, then third in numbers were French.”
Fifteen of the dozens killed were British, the UK Foreign Office said. Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood told reporters Saturday that “the numbers may well rise.”
Three Belgians, a German and a woman from Ireland were also among the dead, with the Irish government indicating Saturday that there is also “grave concern for two other Irish citizens who had been at the scene.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on Saturday, a German government spokesman said. Merkel expressed her condolences, the spokesman said, and both leaders agreed to cooperate more closely on the issue of terrorism.
In the wake of the resort attack, Essid announced a crackdown on what he called “illegal mosques.”
The mosques were “spreading rumors and poisons to encourage terrorism,” he said Saturday “About 80 (mosques) will be closed … within one week.”
Attacks also in France, Kuwait
Tunisia’s nightmare came on the same day as at least two fatal terrorist attacks in other countries.
A man caused an explosion at a chemical plant near Lyon in southeastern France after having beheaded his boss and leaving the head hanging on a fence, French officials said. Authorities detained the suspect.
And ISIS has claimed responsibility for an apparent bomb blast at the Shiite-affiliated Al-Sadiq mosque in Kuwait’s capital during Friday prayers, leaving at least 27 dead and more than 200 injured.
Spain raised its terror alert in light of the three attacks, the country’s interior minister, Jorge Ferandez, said. Other leaders, like Cameron, reacted as well.
“I am sickened by the attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait,” Cameron tweeted. “Our countries stand together in combating the horrors of terrorism.”
ISIS had vowed museum attack ‘just the start’
Terrorists have targeted Tunisia before, as part of apparent attempts to hurt the nation’s economy by scaring off some of the millions who come each year to soak up its culture and visit its Mediterranean beaches.
Until Friday, the prime example had been the killing of 23 people in March at the landmark Bardo Museum in Tunis.
At the time, it was the deadliest attack on tourists in the Arab world since the 1997 massacre in Luxor, Egypt.
In a subsequent audio statement, ISIS warned that the Bardo Museum attack was “just the start.”
Belgian carrier JetAir not only canceled all its flights to Tunisia in the wake of this new violence, but had one flight turn around mid-flight and return to Brussels. And TUI tour operators Jetair, Sunjets.be and VIP Selection have canceled all departures to Tunisia until further notice.
Some tour groups were sending extra planes to collect tourists who wanted to leave before the scheduled end of their trips.
“All those who want to come home we can get home by tomorrow,” Nick Longman with RIU travel said Saturday.
A thousand customers returned on flights Friday evening, he said. Another 5,400 remained in the country Saturday morning.
The company is canceling all of its tours to Tunisia for the next week, according to Longman.
UK tour operator Thomas Cook said it also was sending two extra flights to Tunisia on Saturday to bring back any tourists who want to return.
Time to reflect
And Tunisians themselves looked inward once again, forced to face the scourge of terrorism and figure out what to do next.
“Tunisia has undergone a remarkable democratic transition and is the success story of the Arab Spring. But our country is still fragile,” said the Ennahda Party, a moderate Islamic group that’s part of Tunisia’s coalition government.
“There is a tiny but poisonous fringe of society across our region, which has wrongly interpreted the Islamic faith and wishes to destroy Tunisia’s progress at any cost. … Today’s attack will not weaken the commitment of Tunisians and people around the world to the values of democracy, equality and the fundamental importance of human life.”