Tunisia hoteliers were 'human shields' for guests

Hotel workers at resorts in Tunisia are praised for their quick thinking as they linked hands to form a barrier to save foreign guests from the gunman who claimed 38 lives.

Friday’s terror attack by a gunman with links to ISIS has claimed the lives of mostly tourists who were visiting the resort city of Sousse on Tunisia’s coast. Witnesses reported that the killer shouted at Tunisians, “I haven’t come for you. Go away.”

Ibrahim al-Ghoul, an 18-year-old paragliding instructor at Imperial Marhaba Hotel, said that he and other hotel staff ran toward the attacker as the shooting was underway in order to protect foreigners.

“I felt he wouldn’t shoot at so many Arabic people in front of him,” Ghoul told British newspaper the Guardian.

“At that point we opened our breasts against the bullets.”

The attacker, 24-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui, opened fire at the Imperial Marhaba hotel and shot at guests for approximately 15 minutes, then proceeded down the beach, where he attempted to enter the Palm Marina Hotel, where hotel staff was prepared for him.

The Palm Marina’s entertainment organiser, Yassine Sadkaoui said that someone from the Imperial Marhaba told him that people were still alive and at that moment, the group decided to act.

“At that moment, it was destiny. It didn’t matter if you got killed or not,” he said.

Another member of the protective group of hoteliers, Anis Gamaoun, waiting supervisor at the Palm Marina, said that he would have rathered that Tunisians died, saying: “He [Rezgui] could have killed us all if he had wanted to.

“It would have been better than killing guests.”

Survivors of the massacre have praised the actions of local residents, saying that they saved many lives. Numerous brave Tunisians tried to stop the gunman, dropping roof tiles on his head, as well as a group of reportedly 30 men who first tried to stop him when he exited the Imperial Marhaba’s lobby after his initial attack. Rezgui reportedly threw a stun grenade at the group and escaped.

Surviving witnesses reported further bravery, with one saying that a hotel chef came running toward them, telling them to ‘run for their lives’.

He was the one who told witnesses that the line of people they could see ahead of them were staff from the hotel,” a witness told British newspaper the Independent.

“He said to this couple that they were telling the gunman ‘you’ll have to get past us and we’re Muslims’. Obviously I don’t know the exact words but that was pretty much what they were saying.

“They’d actually made a human barricade – ‘you’re not going to get past us, you’ll have to kill us.’ "