The death toll from yesterday's massacre at the Bardo museum in Tunis is 19 dead, including 17 foreign tourists, including four Italians. Another 13 of our compatriots are among the 44 people injured and treated in hospitals in the Tunisian capital. In the blitz by the special forces to free the hostages at the museum - among which there were at least 100 Italians - two jihadists were also killed, identified as Yassine Laâbidi, of Ibn Khaldoun, and Hatem Khachnaoui, originally from the city of Kasserine.
Among the victims there would also be two Frenchmen, two Colombians, a Pole, an Australian, two Spaniards, an unidentified tourist and two Tunisians, i.e. a bus driver and a police officer. The Tokyo government has instead denied the death of five Japanese citizens, announced by Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid, speaking of "a mistake" by the local authorities. The Japanese victims, according to Tokyo, would instead be three.
The Farnesina confirmed that four Italians were killed, and 13 others were injured. But the budget, warned the ministry, "is still evolving". Yesterday's was “an attack of considerable ferocity and absolute gravity against innocent people – commented the Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni -. Tunisia was attacked because it is the country of hope with a coalition government between secularists and Muslims, the attack was made against this hope. Certainly we have been fighting against terrorism in many forms for a long time. But to say that the country must feel at war, I think not. Ours is a safe country, alert to terrorist threats".
Unanimous condemnation also came from Washington, Paris and the UN. The head of European Union diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, said that "terrorist organizations have once again struck countries and peoples of the Mediterranean region: this strengthens our determination to work more closely with our partners to address the threat of terrorism ”.
