Here’s What We Know About the Terrorist Attacks That Hit Tunisia, France, and Kuwait

ISIS has claimed responsibility for at least one attack.

The inside of the Imam Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait City following a terrorist bombing.Noufal Ibrahim/Xinhua/ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Dozens of people were killed on Friday in Tunisia, France, and Kuwait in what authorities in all three countries are calling terrorist attacks. Here’s what we know so far.

Tunisia

The deadliest attack happened at a resort in Sousse, a Tunisian beach town popular with European tourists. Tunisian officials said 27 people were killed on the beach near the Imperial Marhaba hotel, some of them foreigners.

“One attacker opened fire with a Kalashnikov on tourists and Tunisians on the beach of the hotel,” a local worker told Reuters. “It was just one attacker. He was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself.”

John Yeoman, a tourist apparently staying at the Imperial Marhaba, tweeted descriptions of the attack and a photo of the barricade he constructed in his hotel room.

The shooting comes three months after another major terrorist attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, and it could devastate Tunisia’s vital tourist economy. “This could well be a dagger through the heart of Tunisian tourism, which would have very dark implications,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Mother Jones.

France

An apparent lone attacker drove a car through the gates of a factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, a city near Lyon in southwestern France, killing one man and leaving his severed head on the front gate of the complex. Gartenstein-Ross said the decapitation suggested the attack may have been inspired by ISIS, whose execution videos have frequently shown the decapitation of Western hostages.

French authorities arrested the suspected attacker, whom French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said was possibly named Yassin Sahli (his name has been spelled differently in various media reports) and was previously known to French law enforcement. “This person was under investigation for radicalization but this investigation was not renewed in 2008,” the Guardian reported. “He had no police record.”

KUWAIT

ISIS, the Sunni jihadist group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City. Media reports have given conflicting numbers of victims, but the Kuwait Watch Organization, a human rights group, told the Associated Press that 16 people were killed. The bombing is the largest terrorist attack in Kuwaiti history; while Kuwait is a majority Shiite country ruled by a Sunni royal family, such large-scale sectarian violence is rare.

Just three days ago, an ISIS spokesman called for the group’s followers to ramp up attacks during the holy month of Ramadan. “Muslims everywhere, we congratulate you over the arrival of the holy month,” said Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in an audio statement released on Tuesday. “Be keen to conquer in this holy month and to become exposed to martyrdom.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate