Four Britons seriously injured in Friday’s terrorist massacre in Tunisia are being flown home for treatment on a military transporter as local officials announced the arrest of suspected members of the network behind the attack.
An RAF C17 plane, used for repatriating wounded soldiers, touched down inTunisia on Monday afternoon as the confirmed British death toll rose to 18. It is expected to rise above 30 in the coming days once formal identifications are complete. The prime minister, David Cameron, announced that a minute’s silence would take place at noon on Friday, exactly a week after the gun and grenade assault that claimed 39 lives.
The Tunisian interior minister, Mohamed Gharsalli, said on Monday the government had seized a group of men who supported the killer Seifeddine Rezgui.
“We started to arrest the first part and an important number of the network behind this terrorist,” he said. “I promise the victims that those killers will face justice.”
As new video emerged showing the gunman rampaging through the hotel for at least 20 minutes without any response from Tunisian security forces, people have started to question if the country had done enough to protect itself and its guests. The interior ministry announced that any hotel that wanted armed guards can now have them.
Fifty UK officials have been despatched to Tunisia to help victims and their families and Cameron told the House of Commons they were engaged in “quite detailed work to make sure hotels are safe” and improving Tunisia’s intelligence-led response to future threats.
Among the injured being evacuated is John Metcalf, 43, who was shot in the abdomen and spent time in intensive care but is now conscious. He has been treated at the same hospital as Allison Heathcote, who was hit five times and remains in a medically induced coma.
“She has wounds from bomb fragments,” said Dr Abdulmajid Msalmi of the Essalem clinic in Sousse. “Alison must stay, but John [Metcalf] can fly.”
On Monday night, Allison Heathcote’s husband, Philip, 52, became the latest confirmed British victim.
Three days after the attacks, there was growing frustration among families of the missing at the lack of information.At least six families are desperate for news.
Many of the 16 UK police officers sent to Tunisia are helping to formally identify the dead, which Cameron told parliament was “in some cases, very difficult”.
Police sources said it involved finding which hotel a victim was staying in and locating their room to search for documents such as passports to establish their identity. The process has to meet standards required by British coroners before UK inquests and must minimise the chance of a mistake so families are not given the wrong information.
Three days after the killings, Holly Graham, 29, from Perthshire, had still not heard about her parents, William and Lisa Graham. On Saturday, hotel staff said they had not been to their room since the attack and their passports had been taken by police.
“I have tried the Foreign Office, the hotel, the hospital in Tunisia and the holiday firm who they travelled with,” she said on Saturday. “Nobody can give me any information and everyone just says they will call me back.”
Sam Stocker said on Twitter on Monday that he still had no news of his grandparents John and Janet Stocker, despite seeking information on Twitter using #FindJohnAndJanetStocker.
Other couples still understood to be missing include Angie and Ray Fisher, whose son Adam Fisher from Redhill in Surrey has been calling the Foreign Office for information, and John Welch and Eileen Swannack from Wiltshire.
The home secretary, Theresa May, visiting the scene of the attack, said: “What happened here last Friday was a despicable act of cruelty. How could a place of such beauty be turned into such a scene of brutality and destruction?”
She said the British government was looking for concrete ways to work with the Tunisian government in “dealing with this terrible threat that we all face” and said the country must be supported as a beacon of democracy and “symbol of what is possible”.
About half of the 20,000 British tourists in Tunisia have returned home since the attacks, the Association of British Travel Agents said.
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