Day of carnage at Tunisian museum leaves memories, questions

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – With bullets flying and his heart pounding, Spanish tourist Josep Lluis Cusido never got a clear look at the men shooting their way through the Bardo museum in Tunis as he hid behind a pillar. The only thing he noticed what that the attacker closest to him seemed young.

Cusido, the mayor of the small Spanish town of Vallmoll, will never know for certain but the man who stood just a few meters (yards) away was likely 20-year-old Yassine Laabidi – the younger of the two attackers.

“They looked to see how they could inflict the most damage possible. I saw one group who was in the museum who took refuge in a room… They went in there and machine gunned them all,” Cusido told The Associated Press Saturday, stifling a sob.

After breakfast Wednesday morning, Laabidi had left home to go to his job making deliveries for a local business, his father Arbi told The Associated Press outside the family’s home in the neighborhood El Omrane at the edge of Tunis.

Later that day he joined up with 26-year-old Hatem Khachnaoui and shot dead 21 people at the renowned museum – including a Tunisian security agent who had recently become a father – before being killed in a shootout with security forces.

Tunisia’s Interior Ministry also released security camera footage showing the gunmen walking through the museum, carrying assault rifles and bags.

Americans Gillian Grant and Carol Calcagni, were climbing the stairs and recalled the terror and confusion most of all.

“I saw someone hiding. I had no idea, you know? Is this a good person, a bad person,” Grant told The Associated Press from Sidi Bou Said, a town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Tunis.

At one point, they peeked around a corner and saw armed men in black gesturing toward them.

“We had to make a decision. We didn’t know if they were the gunmen that had been shooting at everybody or if they were actually the police,” said Calcagni, a retiree from Hilton Head, South Carolina, who was visiting a daughter who works as a teacher in Tunis.

Both women insisted their affection for Tunisia had only grown since the attacks. As the women and other tourists were driven away from the museum after the attacks, their vehicles were surrounded by a cheering crowd.

“Hundreds and hundreds of Tunisians saying that ‘we support you, this is not what Tunisia is.’ All of us in the car were just so struck. It made such a great impression that these people came out in such numbers to give such love and support. We were bowled over,” Grant said.

She had no plans to cut her trip short. Nor did Calcagni.

“What happened here could have happened in any country in the world. Not just Africa, not just Europe, not just the Middle East, but any country. It could have happened in the United States, it could have happened where I live, and I’m not going to curtail anything because of it,” she said.

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Benjamin Wiacek in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed. Heckle reported from Madrid.

This story was originally published March 22, 2015 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Day of carnage at Tunisian museum leaves memories, questions."