A Tunisian hotel worker was spared by the gunman who carried out Friday’s terrorist attack on a beach and inside the Hotel Imperial Marhaba, BBC News reported.
Seifeddine Rezgui, the Tunisian student who carried out the attack, also pointed his gun at her and she believed he spared her because she spoke in Arabic.
Imen Kechiche Guiga was working in her office near the the Hotel Imperial Marhaba reception when the Tunisia beach attack violence erupted.
She saw the gunman and was injured by grenade fragments.
“Customers started running in all directions; they were screaming and crying, saying there was shooting at the beach. I heard shooting; I turned around and the gunman was next to me. He shot and threw a grenade; I threw myself to the ground,” said Guiga told BBC News.
She got, he had moved on, she went into corridor and ran into him again.
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“He was moving backwards, checking if anybody was left, looking through open office doors. He pointed his gun at me as if to shoot me. I started begging him ‘please don’t, please don’t,” she continued.
“He put up his hand to say he was letting me go.
“All I could think of was how to escape. I was thinking of my daughters – who would take care of them if I was killed?”
Her husband had received a panicked phone call from his wife and raced to the scene.
“The gunman was shooting in reception. I decided to grab the baseball bat from my car. I was on the phone to my wife at this point but the line went dead; I thought he had killed her,” he said.
As he tried to enter the hotel to rescue his wife, he had a shocking encounter.
“[The gunman] stopped, he knew I was not armed. He stared at me and continued to walk on. I fell over the wall and injured my hand, then I called my wife. She answered and I went and found where she was. She was covered in blood. She was afraid of blood but as long as she was breathing there was hope,” he added.
“It’s a new life, my wife is reborn, my family is reborn, as if we have become a new family; thank God.”
Tunisia has arrested a group of people over the massacre of 38 people, mainly tourists, by a gunman at the beach resort of Sousse on Friday, the country's interior minister has said.
Four British tourists seriously injured in the Tunisian beach attack have been flown back to the UK by the RAF.
It is feared that about 30 UK citizens were killed, though only 18 have so far been confirmed among the dead.
Along with the Brits, three Irish people were killed, as well as one Belgian and one German.
Tunisians are also thought to be among the dead.
The government says all those hurt at the resort near Sousse on Friday will be brought home in the coming hours.
Tunisian authorities have arrested several people on suspicion of helping the gunman, who had links to ISIS.
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