With the Foreign Office warning Britons not to travel to Tunisia and remaining UK nationals to get out, one Welwyn Garden City mum told her story of the “hysteria” in the north African country, when a terrorist gunman killed 38 people.
Sarah Breeze said she was lucky to be alive after returning from the terror-hit Tunisian resort of Sousse.
Five days into her holiday, with her daughter on June 26, twisted Islamic State terrorist Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi opened fire on beach with a Kalashnikov, killing 38 people, of which 30 were British.
Fortunately the Widford Road resident was not among them.
But Sarah revealed the state of panic and alarm in the resort in the aftermath of the atrocity.
She said: “I was about two miles up the beach so I wasn’t in the actual hotel.
“We were lucky, it wasn’t that far, a different hotel and slightly further up the beach it could have been different.”
She said she first became aware of the massacre after hearing sirens and soon rumours and panic by the pool spread like wildfire.
“It was only when rumours ran around the hotel and people started panicking [that I found out],” she said.
“We were about to go out to the marina and somebody in the toilets said ‘have you heard the story?’
“We went to the internet room and it was rammed with people getting messages back home to say they were alright.”
She described the atmosphere as “hysteria”, which she said “started to build when we had heard there was another gunman”.
She added: “There were helicopters overhead so everyone was very frightened.”
She said a holiday rep arrived after around an hour and a half and there was “an angry rabble” as people wanted to go home immediately.
But Sarah was the opposite.
“I didn’t want to go at that point because I felt safer in the hotel,” she said.
She said things calmed down around two hours later after news of the gunman’s death circulated.
“We got to see some of the pictures of the gunman lying in a pool of blood on Facebook, which was a bit gratifying, I can’t deny.”
She said the ordeal would not deter her from returning to the North African country.
“I would go back, it’s not going to stop me,” she added.”
But the latest UK Government advice read: “The Foreign and Commonwealth Office now advise against all but essential travel to Tunisia.”
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