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Tunisia to Arm Tourist Police After Sousse Shooting – Interior Ministry

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Tunisian Interior Minister Mohammed Najim al-Gharsalli
Tunisian Interior Minister Mohammed Najim al-Gharsalli

Tunisia plans to provide arms to tourist police in the country after a Friday shooting left dozens killed in the resort town of Sousse, Tunisian Interior Minister Mohammed Najim al-Gharsalli wrote on the ministry’s official Facebook page.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry announced that it was going to send extra police units to hotels and coastal areas and to strengthen security measures in Sousse as well as other resorts.

More than 35 people, including at least 15 UK citizens, as well as German, Irish and Belgian nationals, were gunned down on the beach of the Imperial Marhaba hotel in Sousse on Friday. The radical Islamic State militant group, which is predominantly active in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the shooting.

The British Foreign Office warned on Saturday that “further terrorist attacks” could happen in Tunisia’s tourist resorts.

On Saturday night Tunisians in Sousse, a northeastern resort town which is highly dependent on tourism, joined in a “march against terrorism.”

The assault on the Sousse hotel followed a deadly terrorist attack on the Tunis Bardo National Museum in March 2015, which resulted in the death of 24 people, including two of the three gunmen.