Sousse, Tunisia // The slaughter of 39 tourists in the resort of Sousse “strikes at the heart” of Tunisia, ministers warned on Saturday as hundreds of foreigners fled the country.
In response to the terrorist attack, army and police launched a nationwide crackdown, ordering at least 80 “illegal mosques” closed and pledging to shut them down this week.
Prime minister Habib Essid said reservist forces had been called up to defend sites such as hotels and shopping centres.
The crackdown came as more details emerged about the gunman: Saif Rezgui, a 24-year-old student from a stable family, who was not on any terrorism watch list.
His killing spree on the beach of Sousse’s Imperial Marhaba hotel hit Tunisia’s weak underbelly: an economy hugely reliant on tourism.
“This attack strikes at the heart of the country,” said health minister Said Aidi. “They [the terrorists] know what they want to do, they want to stop visitors coming to Tunisia.”
Tunisia had emerged as the most stable of the 2011 Arab Spring countries, seeing peace and democracy take root after the fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
But those democratic roots are shallow, and threatened by a weak economy. Unlike its neighbours, Tunisia lacks significant oil production and is reliant on the twin pillars of auto-part exports and tourism to mitigate high unemployment.
Now one of those two pillars may have been kicked away: along with the evacuation of guests at the Imperial Marhaba, thousands of tourists at neighbouring hotels have also demanded to leave, with more than 1,000 flown out early on Saturday morning.
Officials fear a mass exodus may follow, wrecking the summer season that the hospitality industry relies on.
Tourism employs 340,000 people in Tunisia, where many have already made the link between unemployment and terrorism.
Although militant groups have yet to take firm root, the country is nevertheless a leading source of fighters for ISIL, with more than 5,000 Tunisians reported to be fighting with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.
Mr Essid’s government, appointed after elections late last year, has been struggling to square the circle in which deprivation breeds discontent which in turn fuels extremism. Now his task has become infinitely harder.
It is only three months since the previous massacre of tourists, by two gunmen at the Bardo museum in the capital Tunis, yet hopes that this would be an isolated incident proved premature.
Just as seriously, questions will be raised about the level of security at tourist sites. Survivors of the Sousse massacre said the hotel, despite being one of the biggest and most prestigious in the resort town, had no armed guards or trained security staff, leaving them helpless as the gunman roamed at will.
They described seeing a man in black shorts and shirt running along the beach unloading shots into tourists, before running into the hotel complex.
“Bodies were lying all over the beach,” said Glenn Whitehead, a British tourist. “Some of them were lying on their sun beds, they had not even got off their sun beds when they were shot.”
In the hotel complex, the gunman shot tourists running past the pool, chasing them up marble steps into the foyer.
Inside the hotel, he chased fleeing holiday makers into a stairwell leading to several floors of offices, shooting people as they cowered in corridors.
Mr Whitehead and his wife Anita survived by hiding with about 20 other tourists in the hotel spa, with staff urging them to keep quiet as firing raged outside.
It was more than half an hour before security forces arrived, a response time that is likely to prompt inquiries from the interior ministry – and stoke fears in Tunisia’s resorts.
Most of the gunman’s victims were killed on the beach, a mixture of British, Belgian, French, Irish and German tourists and at least five Tunisian staff. Britain appeared to have suffered the highest toll, confirming on Saturday that at least 15 of its citizens were among the dead.
The Tunisian government said Rezgui, who enjoyed partying and practised break-dancing, was due to receive his master’s degree in engineering in the nearby town of Kairouan.
Similar to other Tunisian extremists, he appeared to have come into contact with hardline preachers about six months ago, a senior security source told Reuters.
“He was a good student and always attending class,” Prime Minister Essid said. “Our investigations show he didn’t reveal any signs of extremism, or ties to terrorists. He wasn’t even on a watch list.”
The government’s immediate response was to declare a crackdown on what Mr Essid called “illegal mosques”.
Blaming the mosques for “spreading rumours and poisons to encourage terrorism,” he said about 80 mosques across the country would be shut in the coming days in a bid to halt extremist propaganda.
The closures highlight the contradictions of a country which is proud of its pluralistic nature, with both churches and synagogues operating freely in the capital, and yet which also breeds a tiny minority of extremists.
The Bardo killings in March saw huge spontaneous protests by Tunisians against extremism of all kinds, in an outpouring of emotion not seen since the revolution. Those protests were confirmation of the popularity of democracy in the country, yet that democratic government is now facing an economic catastrophe that will put it under unprecedented strain.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting from Agencies