2015 Sousse attacks

On 26 June 2015, a mass shooting occurred at the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel, a Spanish-owned five-star resort in Port El Kantaoui, roughly ten kilometres north of Sousse, Tunisia. The hotel was hosting 565 guests, mostly from Western Europe, and tourists from the hotel and the nearby Soviva Hotel were on the beach when the attack began around noon.

The attacker, Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi, a 22-year-old electrical engineering student from Gaâfour in northwest Tunisia, disguised himself as a tourist and socialised with others before producing a Kalashnikov assault rifle he had concealed in a beach umbrella. He opened fire on tourists on the beach, then entered the hotel, continuing to shoot people and reportedly throwing grenades. He was killed by security forces during an exchange of fire. An autopsy found medications and an illegal drug in his system. All fired bullets were traced to his single weapon, for which he carried four magazines of ammunition. During the attack he spoke with his father by mobile phone before throwing the phone into the sea; it was later retrieved. A Tunisian Interior Ministry spokesman said officials believed others had assisted, supplying the rifle and helping Rezgui reach the scene, without participating directly.

Thirty-eight people were killed, 30 of them British, and thirty-nine others were wounded. Victims included Denis Thwaites, a former professional footballer for Birmingham City, and his wife Elaine, as well as three generations of one family: Adrian Evans, Patrick Evans and Joel Richards. The attack surpassed the March 2015 Bardo National Museum attack, which had killed 22 people, as the deadliest non-state attack in modern Tunisian history.

In January 2017, documents obtained by the BBC's Panorama identified Chamseddine al-Sandi as the orchestrator behind the attack, based on confessions from arrested suspects, who said al-Sandi ran a militant cell responsible for both the Sousse and Bardo attacks; both were claimed by the Islamic State.

An inquest in London found the Tunisian police response "at best shambolic and at worst cowardly," noting that armed security personnel near the attack retreated for roughly half an hour awaiting reinforcements while the gunman continued killing. By March 2017, Tunisian authorities had referred at least six police officers to trial for criminal negligence and 27 others on similar charges. The coroner ruled the victims were "unlawfully killed," and relatives subsequently pursued legal action against tour operator TUI through law firm Irwin Mitchell, representing 85 affected families; a settlement was later reached without admission of liability. The Tunisian government "acknowledged fault" for the slow police response. A memorial to the British victims, "Infinite Wave," was unveiled in Birmingham in March 2019.