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| Tunisian television: A man holding a child flees from the gunmen |
Two Britons are feared to be among 17 tourists killed today after two gunmen 'hunted down' foreigners outside a popular Tunisian museum, before being killed themselves in a dramatic police raid.
Seventeen of those killed were foreigners, but local reports suggesting two were British are yet to be confirmed.
Tunisian prime minister Habib Essid has now warned two or three gunmen involved in the attack may still be at large.
He described how the vulnerable tourists were 'hunted down' as they exited cruise ship buses to visit the popular museum in the country's capital of Tunis, before two gunmen entered the museum to take dozens more hostage.
He said: 'The terrorist fired randomly as they got off the buses. As they fled, they were hunted and chased down.'
It is believed several hundred managed to flee the museum, while another 20 - 30 were taken captive before anti-terrorist security forces raided the building.
Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said 21 people were killed: 17 tourists, two gunmen, a Tunisian security officer and a Tunisian cleaning woman. He said the dead tourists came from Italy, Poland, Germany and Spain.
It is unclear who the attackers were, but a video posted online in December attributed to Islamic State warned the jihadis would target the country.
Mohamed Ali Aroui, an Interior Ministry spokesman, described the two attackers as 'Islamists' in local broadcasts, CNN reported.
National guardsmen and anti-terrorist police quickly surrounded the hugely popular tourist site, which is visited by thousands of foreigners every year, including many Britons.
Fleets of ambulances could also be seen driving in and out of the museum grounds, as helicopters flew overhead.
Two heavily armed terrorists were believed to have been holed-up inside with Kalashnikovs and they entered the museum disguised as soldiers, said an Interior Ministry spokesman in Tunis.
Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said on Radio Mosaique that one of the dead was a Tunisian. He didn't provide nationalities for the other victims.
Farouk Afi, a blogger in Tunisia, was about to meet his friend in the museum when he heard the shots go off, according to the BBC.
He said: 'I was near, next door in the café, and I was going to meet with my friends. I heard it and I didn’t know at that moment what it was, but the police told me go far from this place.
'[My friend] is now with many people [inside the museum] and not sure how many people have fled and injuries and deaths.'
The museum, built within a 15th-century palace, is the largest museum in Tunisia with collections covering two floors.
The museum is near the North African country's parliament, some four kilometres (two-and-a-half miles) from the city centre. A new wing with contemporary architecture was built as part of a 2009 renovation, doubling the surface area. Some 8,000 works are displayed in the museum, according to the website.
The attack comes the day after Tunisian security officials confirmed the death in neighbouring Libya of a leading suspect in Tunisian terror attacks and the killings of two opposition figures in Tunisia.
Ahmed Rouissi gained the nickname of the 'black box of terrorism'. The information on his death was made public by security officials giving evidence in parliament and cited by the official TAP news agency.
Libya, which has devolved into chaos, is a source of major concern for Tunisia.
Also a major worry is the Mount Chaambi area on the border with Algeria where al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has reportedly been helping a Tunisian group which has killed numerous soldiers.
French prime minister Manuel Valls said today: 'We are condemning this terrorist attack in the strongest terms. We are standing by the Tunisian government. We are very alert about how the situation is evolving.'
And French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement: 'It is not by chance that today's terrorism affects a country that represents hope for the Arab world. The hope for peace, the hope for stability, the hope for democracy. This hope must live.'The Telegraph has a longer and slightly more recent set of updates here.
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