UK announces memorial for Tunisia beach attack victims

LONDON, United Kingdom – The 30 British victims of last week’s Tunisian beach attack are to receive a permanent memorial funded by fines on banks, Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Sunday, July 5.

There will be a separate site of remembrance for all Britons who have been victims of overseas terrorism, he added.

“Those who lost their lives in Tunisia last week were innocent victims of a brutal terrorist atrocity,” he said. (READ: Britons fall silent for Tunisia attack victims)

“It is right that we mark and commemorate them and others murdered by terrorists overseas, appropriately and support the loved ones they have left behind in every way we can.”

The location and design of the memorial will be decided over the coming months, said Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood, whose brother Jonathan was killed in the Bali bombing of 2002.

The memorials will be funded by banking fines levied by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The final 5 British victims of the Tunisia beach shooting arrived home on Saturday, on board an RAF C-17 aircraft.

Their coffins were taken in convoy to a London coroner’s court, where inquests into their deaths will be held.

Cameron also announced there would be a service for those caught up in the Tunisian attack to be held in the autumn.

Tourists fled in horror as a Tunisian identified as 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from inside a furled beach umbrella and went on a shooting spree outside a five-star hotel on June 26.

British holidaymakers accounted for 30 of those killed, along with three Irish nationals, two Germans, one Belgian, one Portuguese and a Russian, before the assailant was himself shot dead. The attack has been claimed by the Islamic State group (IS, formerly known as ISIS or the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq).

On Tuesday, Britons will mark the 10th anniversary of the 2005 London suicide bombings that killed 52 people.

The victims will be remembered with a wreath-laying ceremony at London’s Hyde Park ahead of a religious service in St Paul’s Cathedral. – Rappler.com