IS claims Tunisia tourist massacre and promises more attacks

Tunisian police officers, stand guard at the Charles Nicolle hospital in Tunis Tunisia, Thursday, March 19, 2015, while hospital personnel pass by. Image by (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The Islamic State group has issued a statement claiming responsibility for the deadly attack on Tunisia’s national museum that killed 23 people.

The statement described the attack as a “blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia”, and appeared on a forum that carries messages from the group.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group also announced that IS had claimed responsibility for the attack.

The statement said there were two attackers and they were not killed until they ran out of ammunition and it promised further attacks.

People walk by as as a police officer guards the National Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia. Image by (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

“Wait for the glad tidings of what will harm you, impure ones, for what you have seen today is the first drop of the rain,” said the statement.

IS, which is based in Syria and Iraq, has affiliates in neighbouring Libya, where many Tunisians have gone to fight and train with extremist groups.

Earlier this week, a prominent Tunisian field commander for IS was killed in fighting inside Libya.

Tunisia’s government, meanwhile, announced the arrest of nine people – four of whom were connected directly to the attack and five others who supported them elsewhere in the country, authorities said.

The attack on the museum, which houses Roman artefacts in Tunis, was the worst at a tourist site in Tunisia in years. The deaths of so many tourists prompted a leading Italian cruise ship line to announce it was cancelling all stops in Tunisia indefinitely.

One of the killed gunmen was known to intelligence services, the prime minister said.

Prime Minister Habib Essid told France’s RTL radio that Tunisia was working with other countries to learn more about the dead attackers, identified as Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. He said Laabidi had been flagged to intelligence, although not for “anything special.”

See also: Twitter users pledge to visit Tunisia after terrorist attack

Tourists killed in Tunis include Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Australian, Polish and French

Seventeen tourists killed in horror attack in Tunis

(Press Association)