Incredible stories of horror and heroism at the resort that turned suddenly from paradise to killing ground..
Owen Richards just kept running. Around him bodies fell to the ground as the lone gunman took aim and fired at the tourists on the crowded beach.
The 16-year-old was hit in the shoulder, the bullet grazing his flesh on its way into the skull of the adult stood beside him. Owen’s uncle and brother also died in the onslaught.
Owen Richards, left, with (l-r) Adrian Evans, Patrick Evans and Joel Richards, who are all believed to have died
Owen’s terrifying ordeal emerged on Saturday, relayed by the medical team who treated the teenager for his injuries at a clinic in Sousse, a five-minute drive from the El Kantaoui resort, an area dominated by four and five star hotels and miles of pristine white sand.
Other astonishing tales of heroics and of fortune were also disclosed as Britain and the world came to terms with the massacre.
The beach at El Kantaoui was largely deserted yesterday. A huge area of sand running up to the rear entrance of the Rui Imperial Marhaba Hotel was fenced off, with upturned sunloungers serving as temporary barriers. The day before they had been used as makeshift stretchers.
Nearby concrete paths remained stained with blood. The hotel itself was empty apart from staff. Occupants had been bussed out in the night in the aftermath of the worst terrorist atrocity committed against British citizens since the July 7 attacks on London a decade ago.
The day before it had all been so different.
Police officers control the crowd while surrounding a man suspected of being involved in the attack (Reuters)
The El Kantaoui beach had been crowded with sunseekers. So too the Imperial Marhaba hotel’s large pool area and the other hotels around it, the Bellevue Hotel, the Royal Kenz Hotel and the Palm Marina Hotel. With temperatures already touching 85F this was perfect holiday weather for lazing by the water and doing nothing.
Just before noon on Friday that calm was shattered; all hell would break loose.
At the Bellevue, the water aerobics class had just finished when a family swimming in the hotel’s pool heard what they thought was the sound of firecrackers being set off; back on the beach, sunbathers also recalled hearing what they first assumed to be fireworks.
At the Imperial Marhaba, perhaps the most popular of the hotels on that stretch of coastline, this was the start of the high season and the hotel’s 370 rooms were close to 75 per cent occupancy.
In the absence of armed security, the holidaymakers, packed on the beach and at the pool, were effectively sitting ducks.
Bodies on the beach in Tunisia
Nobody seems to have noticed Seifeddine Rezgui, 23, a Tunisian student, who had wandered on to the beach, wearing black T-shirt and shorts. He was clean shaven and dressed like a Western tourist. In the dense fug of confusion, some reports suggested he had arrived by boat; others that he had turned up on a jet ski. Whatever the reality, Rezgui had strolled along the sand, nobody noticing the Kalashnikov assault rifle concealed inside a parasol.
On Saturday, two young Tunisian locals, who organise parasailing and jet ski rides from the beach recalled that some time between 11.30am and 11.45am the gunman approached the sun loungers arranged along the beach.
“I was sitting talking to some guests from the Imperial Marhaba hotel. We are all friends here,” said one of the two men, who identified himself as Wael. He didn’t think much of it when he heard the first bang.
“I heard a kind of hissing clap sound and thought it must be someone messing around with fireworks for a joke,” said Wael. Then the reality dawned.
The killer strolls on the beach, moments after opening fire on tourists (SKY NEWS)
Reports suggest that Rezgui first shot at a paraglider hovering above the Mediterranean. He then turned his Kalashnikov on the sunbathers.
Owen was on the beach with close relatives when Rezgui opened fire. He would later relay his terrible ordeal to the medical team that treated him and another 13 Britons at the Clinique les Oliviers.
He was so close to the gunfire that it had left him temporarily deafened in one ear. A bullet grazed his shoulder, leaving him with a flesh wound.
“He was shocked. He was talking about a bullet coming over his shoulder,” said Dr Fakher Benamor, a 54-year-old gynaecologist who was pressed into emergency work helping the wounded at the private clinic. The doctor said the bullet then hit a close relative.
As Owen fled the slaughter on the beach, he saw guests dropping around him in a hail of bullets.
He told doctors that, after the initial burst of gunfire, the beachgoers stampeded in panic and began running back towards the hotel. Dr Benamor said: “They were running away. As he was running, he looked back and saw people being shot behind him. People were shouting ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and they were just falling.”
Mohammad Majmaji, chief nurse at the Clinique les Oliviers, said he found Owen at the scene when he was sent to collect victims by ambulance.
The teenager was distraught but still able to help another guest who was wounded.
“He was helping the injured woman who had been shot in the back. He was crying,” said Mr Majmaji.
Matthew James and his fiancee Sarah Wilson (Wales News)
The clinic was also treating Matthew James yesterday for life-threatening stomach injuries. Mr James, 30, from Cardiff, had been sunbathing on the beach with his fiancée Saera Wilson, 26, when they came under attack. Mr James used his own body as a human shield to protect Miss Wilson. “He took a bullet for me. I owe him my life because he threw himself in front of me when the shooting started,” she said, “He was covered in blood from the shots but he just told me to run away.
“He told me: ‘I love you babe. But just go – tell our children that their daddy loves them.”
Others on the beach had fortunate escapes. Rita Williams, 76, was one of those. A bullet tore through her pink straw sun hat and narrowly missed her head.
“I’ve been so lucky – I’m still shaking. It was all so frightening,” Mrs Williams, of Maesteg, South Wales, told The Telegraph.
She and her husband Ken were on the way back to their hotel next door to the Imperial Marhaba when the shooting began.
“We were walking back along the beach back to our hotel when we heard what sounded like fire crackers. Then I felt something hit my head – it just felt like I had been hit,” she said, “The force of it knocked me down on to the sand and I said to Ken, ‘I think I’ve been hit’.”
They followed a crowd of tourists to a neighbouring hotel and hid in the lobby for two hours.
Mr Williams said: “It was like a war zone, we didn’t know where the shots were coming from.
“It makes you appreciate life. I came so close to a terrible situation. I was shaken for a long time.”
Ellie Makin, 22, a former British tennis tour player, who was on holiday with her friend Debbie Horsfall, was another counting her blessings. She was close by when Rezgui pulled his gun from under his parasol. “All of a sudden he dropped the umbrella and had a gun, and he started shooting everyone to the right of me,” said Miss Makin.
Christopher and Paula Emery and their family also got lucky. They ran into the water, away from the gunman, before jumping into two speed boats that were passing by.
Gary Pine, 47, from Bristol, and his wife Nicola screamed at their 22-year-old son to get out of the sea. “You could hear bullets whizzing around,” said Mr Pine, “My wife was shouting at my son to get out of the sea, and as he ran up the beach, he said: ‘I just saw someone get shot’.”
Some tourists had no idea what was happening. One holidaymaker said later she thought a tsunami must have been approaching to explain the rush from the sea.
With bodies falling, Rezgui marched on. “He was laughing and joking around, like a normal guy,” said a Tunisian witness. “He was choosing who to shoot. Some people he was saying to them, ‘you go away’. He was choosing tourists, British, French.
As the tourists fled, Rezgui went after them, entering the grounds of the Imperial Marhaba Hotel, reaching first the crowded figure of eight swimming pool.
By the pool was Tony Callaghan, 63, from North Walsham, Norfolk, who works for Norfolk police. He realised that the sound coming from the beach was gunfire not firecrackers. His actions probably saved a number of lives. “I used to be in the Royal Air Force,” said Mr Callaghan, “I know the sound of gunfire. I shouted to everyone, ‘this isn’t a fireworks display, you need to get yourself to safety now’.”
Tony Callaghan with the glasses case (Warren Allott/The Telegraph)
Mr Callaghan made a run for it, passing four bodies covered in blood as he did so. He could hear his wife Christine screaming for help from inside the hotel’s reception area. The couple and another 20 guests scurried towards the rear of the hotel, breaking into offices to take cover. The gunman appears to have followed them.
Mrs Callaghan said: “As I ran, I was shot, although I didn’t know I had been. I wasn’t in pain, just total shock.
“I had been clutching my beach bag in front of me, against my middle, and inside were my glasses in a hard case. The bullet must have ricocheted off the glasses case, otherwise it would have hit my stomach.
“I’m just lucky to be alive. If it hadn’t been for my glasses, I might not have survived.”
Mrs Callaghan in hospital after the attack (Barcroft)
The firing was incessant; the level of fear hard to comprehend. At one point, as yet unclear timing-wise, Mr Callaghan was hit in the left knee; his wife was also shot. Neither had actually seen the gunman. Later the couple would be photographed hugging in the Sahloul University hospital thankful to be alive.
Piecing together the events of Friday, it appears Tom Richards, a 22-year-old civil engineering graduate, and his mother Sam were also in the party of 20 or so tourists trapped by Rezgui in the hotel’s back offices along with the Callaghans.
They too had been at the pool when they heard the shots, and ran for their lives. Hotel staff ushered them from the open space of the reception area, upstairs to the offices.
But the gunman followed them up to the first and then second floor. “He shot two people through the head,” said Mr Richards, who then found himself face to face with the killer, who was pointing the Kalashnikov assault rifle at him. “He looked right at me – I thought I was dead,” said Mr Richards. “He was maybe 20 or 25, he had long black hair.”
At that point, Rezgui fired, sending bullets seemingly in all directions. Mr Richards and his mother were wounded by shrapnel from the marble floor as it disintegrated. Mr Richards was hit in the wrist; his mother in the ankle.
“I don’t know why he stopped. He could have killed everybody,” said Mr Richards, from Cheshire. The pair dashed to a toilet and locked themselves in a cubicle, using toilet roll as makeshift bandages. A young woman in the cubicle next door was covered in blood, a large fragment of marble stuck in her thigh. Mr Richards removed the marble and bandaged the woman’s leg. They remained in the cubicle for an hour, until rescued by the Tunisian military.
Ross Thompson and his girlfriend Rebecca Smith (Warren Allott /The Telegraph)
Other hotel holidaymakers had dashed for their rooms, barricading themselves in. Ross Thompson and his girlfriend Rebecca Smith, from Coventry, both suffered shrapnel wounds. Doctors later put his foot and arm in a cast.
“We managed to get the room barricaded, got down low and just hid,” said Mr Thompson.
Ms Smith, 22, said: “I was peppered with grenade shrapnel. With one hit, I thought my jaw had come off.”
Mr Thompson, a fire safety officer, said: “We followed the majority of people to the second floor. Staff were saying ‘come this way’, But when we got to the end of a corridor it was a dead end. There was no way down but a 30ft drop.”
He added: “We managed to get into a room and barricaded the door. It happened that there were two British ex-military guys with us and they were telling us what to do. It felt like we were in there 45 minutes.
“Then we could hear him coming up the stairs. He started firing down the corridor. We tried to escape but he caught us.
“There was no way out, we were trapped at the end of the corridor, and then he started lobbing these home-made bombs at us.”
People used Twitter and Facebook as the running gun battle continued, posting updates to reassure loved ones.
Not everybody stayed put.
Alan Pembroke, 61, a British tourist from Essex staying at the nearby Muradi Palm hotel, first escorted his wife back to their hotel to keep her safe and then returned to the beach to help the wounded.
“My wife and I were laying by the parasols,” said Mr Pembroke yesterday. “We heard noises, gunshots, automatic gunfire and then explosions. It sounded like a grenade going off.
“We went back into the hotel quickly and I left my wife in the room and told her to stay locked in. I came back out to the beach and saw bodies lying around. I saw a woman crying. I asked her if she was British. She was German. Her wrist was half hanging off so I grabbed a scarf hanging from the parasol and tied it round that.
“Then I saw she had a bullet wound in her leg. I tied a towel around it as tight as I could. She was saying ‘my husband, my husband’. I checked his pulse but there was nothing. He was lying on the sand and I told her she had to come with me. There was still the sound of gunfire further along.
“She wouldn’t leave him so I put a towel over her and just told her not to move. There was nothing more I could do.”
Keith Hawkes, a 70-year-old former Gurkha and a regular holidaymaker in the area, also risked his own life to tend to the wounded, running towards the gunfire. “It was my training we had to go and help them,” he said. “I saw the gunman; I almost passed within feet of him trying to get to all those dead bodies,” Mr Hawkes, from Somerset, told The Times, “Why he didn’t shoot me, I’ll never know.”
Stephen Walls, of Malton in North Yorks, also told yesterday of running to rescue his wife, Jacqueline.
Mr Walls, a former soldier, said: “As people were running away [from the gunfire], I was running towards it because I knew my wife was down there somewhere.
“I saw a number of people badly hurt and came across a number of people who were dead on the beach.”
In a 22-year career with the Royal Signals, he said he had never seen anything as harrowing.
By now, Rezgui had been on the rampage for around 25 to 40 minutes, judging by the live posts on Twitter. It seems to have gone quiet by about 12.26pm. By this stage, Rezgui appears to have been cornered in a street outside the Imperial Marhaba hotel. Shaky video images and still photographs show running gun battles with Tunisian special forces. A subsequent image showed Rezgui lying flat on his face, in black T-shirt and shorts, in a pool of blood.
Questions were being asked as to how the lone gunman had been able to kill so many people so quickly while unchallenged. Tunisia had already suffered a terrible terror attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March.
On Saturday the beach at El Kantaoui was empty apart from the odd tourist, including Alan Pembroke, returning to the scene to reflect on what had happened.
A young blonde woman in a white bikini walked alone through the now cleaned-up stretch of sand where yesterday the bodies had been strewn. One by one, she placed red and white roses in a floral tribute on an overturned sun lounger with a handwritten message in English and German that simply read “Why? Warum?”
Sobbing with grief she turned to nearby journalists and pleaded in German for “respect” before walking away.
In the night, most of the British tourists had gone, packed on to coaches and taken to the airport in a mass evacuation.
Back on home soil in Manchester, Olivia Leathley, 24, a chef, gave her father the tightest of hugs. Miss Leathley had been on the telephone to her father in her hotel room when the gunman had begun firing. She and her boyfriend Mike Jones, 24, had run for their lives. “I’ve never been so scared. I’d called my dad and I’m screaming down the phone to him saying ‘Dad, I love you’,” she said.
In Tunisia, the tourist industry will find it hard to recover. “We may have zero clients today, but we will keep our staff,” said Mohammed Becheur, manager of the Imperial Marhaba hotel.
Meanwhile Wael, the Tunisian boat organiser who had watched in horror as his compatriot opened fire, told yesterday how he had helped Britons into speed boats. “We had to save people,” he said.
His colleague Hassan had grabbed four British guests who were swimming in the sea – three women and a man with a wounded shoulder – and helped them to safety in his boat. Ordinary Tunisians queued to give blood to show they too wanted to help.
Amdi, a friend of Hassan and Wael and who also works in the tourism industry, chipped in. “Please tell people that we Tunisians helped the tourists,” he told The Telegraph. “ We like Europeans. This was just one crazy man.”
Hope it's enough pic.twitter.com/XaW4yTpplU
— John Yeoman (@johnyeo68) June 26, 2015
John Yeoman posted a picture from inside his hotel room – he was staying at a neighbouring hotel – of furniture rammed up against the door. “Hope it’s enough,” he posted on Twitter at 12.29pm.
