TORONTO – Dramatic video has emerged showing terrified tourists caught in the middle of last week’s attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis that killed 21 people after two gunmen opened fire.
The video begins with a museum guide explaining to a tour group some of the features of the museum’s renowned collection of Roman mosaics. Suddenly two loud bangs can be heard with one tourist asking, in Italian, “Did they shoot? Did they shoot?”
Two more shots can be heard as the group begins to flee along a corridor.
The shaky video shows petrified tourists running for their lives as several more gunshots ring out through the cavernous museum.
According to The Associated Press, the footage was captured by Italian tourist Maria Rita Gelotti, who was traveling with her husband Marcello Salvatori on the Costa Fascinosa, a cruise ship which had docked in Tunis earlier that day.
READ MORE: How will the Bardo attack affect Tunisia’s vital tourism industry?
“My husband and me thought we would die because while we descended the stairs we heard Kalashnikovs firing behind and on top of us,” she told reporters. “Then I saw a guy with his trousers covered in blood. We didn’t know how many dead there were in there. We didn’t know anything. All that night I cried, genuinely frightened.”
The attack on the Bardo Musuem began when two gunmen opened fire on tour buses outside the museum, just steps away from Tunisia’s parliament. The attackers killed 19 foreign tourists and two Tunisians and injured dozens more, before taking hostages inside the museum. The two gunmen were later killed by security forces.
The Bardo Museum, a major tourist destination in the North African nation, was scheduled to re-open Tuesday after last week’s attack, but was postponed for logistical and security reasons.
“There is obviously also the security aspect being taken into account,” Hanene Srarfi, a museum spokesperson, told AP.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the extremist group which controls large swaths of land between Syria and Iraq.
Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsie announced Sunday police are searching for a third suspect in the shooting.
*With files from The Associated Press
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