Twenty-Eight Killed in Attacks on Tunisian Hotels

Unknown number of gunmen attack hotels in popular tourist area

Gunmen stormed two hotels in the Tunisian coastal city of Sousse on Friday, killing at least 28 people and wounding 36, state media reported.

An unknown number of gunmen targeted hotels in Sousse, a town popular with tourists that sits on the Mediterranean Sea. The attack unfolded on the same day as others in Kuwait and France.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting in Tunisia.

According to the country’s interior ministry, two men armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the beach at the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba, opening fire on dozens of tourists lounging on the shore before one of the attackers was shot dead.

The second attacker is believed to have fled, the ministry said.

Bodies lie on a beach in Sousse Friday, following attacks on tourists at two hotels. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency

 

The Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba is a five-star complex with 366 guest rooms and several swimming pools, according to its website. It is owned by Spain’s RIU Hotels & Resorts, which operates more than 100 hotels in 16 countries.

A spokeswoman for the company had no comment on the shooting or information about the victims but said it planned to issue a statement on its website.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, speaking in Brussels, confirmed that one of the hotels where tourists were shot is owned by a Spanish company. He said the attacks in Tunisia and France were acts of terror.

Sousse, a city along Tunisia’s eastern coast about 130 km, or about 80 miles, south of Tunis, was the site of a terrorist attack in October 2013, when a suicide bomber detonated himself in front of a hotel killing only himself.

Friday marks the second attack on Tunisian tourism, one of the country’s largest industries, since March. Then, two gunmen sieged the Bardo National Museum in the capital, Tunis, killing 20 tourists and one police officer.

The attack was later claimed by a group aligning itself with Islamic State. The Tunisian gunmen had received weapons training in neighboring Libya, where Islamic State is gaining strength. The Bardo incident triggered a government crackdown on homegrown extremists, resulting in the arrest of one dozen suspected of terrorist links.

The attack Friday at the Tunisian resort comes the same day as a man was decapitated at a U.S.-owned industrial gas factory in southeastern France in what authorities believe to be a terrorist attack. Also on Friday, a deadly explosion at a Shiite Muslim mosque in Kuwait City killed several worshipers.

The attacks, while not thought to be linked, coincide with the one-year anniversary of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s establishment of a “caliphate” spanning the territory under the group’s control in Syria and Iraq. On June 29 last year, following its capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, Islamic State announced statehood and demanded allegiance from other extremist groups.

On Tuesday, Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani issued a nearly half-hour audio statement that congratulated its followers on the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

The message sought to exploit the sectarian resentment dividing Iraq by calling on Sunnis to launch attacks against Shia and government supporters during the month, which Mr. Adnani described as a sacred time to wage jihad. Islamic State is a Sunni extremist group, and Iraq’s government is mostly Shia.

—David RomÁn in Madrid contributed to this article.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com