Knights of the Islamic State
"There was a great hole in his head. I felt his body slip onto mine. We were all crammed together on top of each other and there were lots of wounded. My friend had two people on top of him who were seriously injured and losing a lot of blood. So what we did, as we were scared the terrorists would come back, was to smear victims' blood over our bodies."
"As we were still alive, we thought it would be best to play dead and smear blood all over ourselves in case they returned."
"[The terrorists] came from nowhere, shooting in all directions."
Maryline, Parisian tourist, Tunisia, Bardo Museum
"We saw a man come running in chased by the shots of a terrorist. We hid in a small room and that's where we stayed. We spent all night there and we thought the terrorists were still outside. But it was simply the police who were searching for people. We thought they were terrorists out there and that's why we didn't venture out."
Juan Carlos Sanchez, Cristina Rubio, Spanish couple
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| Gunfire: Glass shattered by bullets at the scene of the massacre Marwen Farhani/ Transterra Medi |
Cristine Rubio, four months' pregnant and her husband spent a full day shuttered within a tiny room used to stock cleaning supplies at the Bardo museum, next to the Tunis Parliament buildings. And there they stayed, terrified, long after the attack had concluded, an attack that left twenty tourists and two Tunisians dead. "It was terrible. Every time I think about it I start crying", a South African tourist said. His wife had been shot and critically injured.
And then there were the people who took shelter behind a pillar. Nothing seemed to deter the gunmen, they fired indiscriminately as was their intention, to kill as many people as possible. Nine people have been arrested by Tunisian police. But the country's tourism has been left in a state of shambles, an industry that Tunisia is heavily dependent on. The two gunmen who were killed by police were praised by Islamic State in an audio recording which proudly described them in Arabic as "knights of the Islamic State".
Unsurprisingly, the Islamic State connection has been made, given that Tunisians, coming from the crucible of the Arab Spring -- the only Arab Muslim and North African country for whom the protests that resulted in the removal of an autocratic government manoeuvred its way toward a true democracy -- has unwillingly donated roughly three thousand jihadis to Syria, Iraq and Libya to fight for the Islamic State caliphate.
Avoidance of stops in Tunis for cruise ship companies will become routine from Italian Costa Cruises and MSC Cruises, along with two German tour companies which had decided to halt all further trips to Tunis from beach resorts nearby. "If you use the analogy of a needle in a haystack, the haystack gets a lot bigger in the summer months and this is a very, very difficult time for the Turkish authorities", commented Chris Phillips, former head of the U.K. National Counter Terrorism Security Office, noting that vacationers travelling to Turkey will make it difficult to track would-be jihadists passing through.
Four of the people arrested by police, according to authories, had links that led directly to the assault. The remaining arrested five had indirect connections. As people gathered outside the now-locked gates of the Bardo Museum to protest the attack, they voiced sympathy for the victims and concern for their country's future was not far from their minds. "We've never had a problem with terrorists. They are animals and when they are caught the government should strip them of their citizenship" Radhia Loveti, 49 recommended.
Stripping such monsters of citizenship will be of scant comfort to the tourists from France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, Columbia and Tunisia itself who had made a trip of a lifetime on the MSC Splendida cruise ship, to dock at the Port of Tunis hours before the attack took place.
Labels: Atrocity, Islamic State, Tunisia
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 21, 2015
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