Suspected associates of the gunman who carried out the Tunisian beach massacre were arrested yesterday.
The country’s interior minister Najem Gharsalli said a “significant number” of individuals were detained.
A total of 38 people, including up to 30 Britons, died after Kalashnikov-wielding student Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire in the resort of Sousse on Friday.
News of the arrests came as the official toll of UK deaths rose to 18. Downing Street said all British nationals injured would be returned within the next 24 hours and Home Secretary Theresa May visited the scene of the attack. Speaking at a press conference after laying flowers and observing a period of silence, May said the atrocity was “ a despicable act of cruelty”.
She said: “How could a place of such beauty, of relaxation and happiness, be turned into such a scene of brutality and destruction?”
She said she had heard “horror stories” of those caught up in the attack and accounts of “great bravery”, including Mathew James, who was hit in the hip, chest and pelvis as he shielded wife-to-be Saera Wilson from gunfire.
A place of beauty, relaxation and happiness was turned into a scene of brutality
May said she had taken part in a “very constructive” meeting with politicians from Tunisia and other countries, adding: “ We are very clear that the terrorists will not win. We will be united in working together to defeat them, but united also in working to defend our values.”
Officials confirmed yesterday that the total number of Britons killed when a gunman opened fire on sunbathers in the resort of Sousse is expected to reach “around 30”.
Four people needing treatment were flown back to the UK on board an RAF C17 plane with “medevac” teams experienced at bringing injured service personnel back from operations overseas.
The Prime Minister, who chaired a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergencies committee at 10 Downing Street, promised a “full spectrum response” to extremist terror. He said the “existential threat” posed by the emergence of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was “the struggle of our generation and we have to fight it with everything we can”.
The Prime Minister said the government is working “as fast as we can” to get information to families still waiting in anguish for news of missing loved.
“I know it has taken time but these are very difficult things and we must get them right,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The PM’s spokeswoman said delays in identifying the dead are due to the fact that the holidaymakers may not have been carrying identification at the time of the attack.
In two cases where the British authorities “feared the worst”, individuals thought to have possibly been victims of the gunman were yesterday tracked down alive and well in the UK, she said.