Pretoria - The South African woman injured in the Tunisian museum shooting was struck by two bullets fired by Islamic State (IS) gunmen as she and other tourists stepped off a bus to enter the museum, it has emerged.
The woman, whose family has requested anonymity, was critically wounded in the shooting at the famous Bardo National Museum this week.
She’d had an emergency operation in Tunis and was fighting for her life on Friday, sources said.
Her husband, who was with her, was slightly hurt in the attack.
The couple were on a Mediterranean cruise on the ship MSC Splendida and had taken a bus tour to the museum.
After the shooting, some of the couple’s children flew out from London to join them in Tunis.
“They hit us where it hurts most – tourism is almost the backbone of our economy,” Mohamed Fadhel Ayari, Tunisia’s ambassador to South Africa, said on Friday.
He said his government’s tourism ministry was taking care of the South African family and had put them up in a hotel for free.
Twenty-three people, 19 of them foreigners, were killed in the attack and about 44 people were injured, most of them tourists.
Ayari appealed to the world to support Tunisia at this moment of crisis, saying it had suffered a major blow.
“Tunisians can’t believe it… This happened on the eve of the tourism season, which starts in May. They wanted to give a big blow to tourism.”
Ayari noted that the terrorists had partly succeeded as some tourist cruise ship companies had decided not to return to Tunisia.
This included the MSC Splendida, which was carrying 78 South Africans when it docked in Tunis. The company said all the other South Africans had been accounted for, although nine of its passengers had died in the attack.
The ship sailed to Barcelona shortly after the shooting.
Ayari said that Tunisia welcomed the expressions of great solidarity from major powers such as the US, UK, France, and the UN.
He was heartened by the many expressions of support on social media, mainly from young people around the world, who were sending the message: “We are Bardo – we will go to Tunisia this summer.”
This echoed the “Je Suis Charlie” hashtag used in support of the French cartoonists murdered by Islamists in Paris earlier this year.
“This is a good thing. We can’t be left alone at this time.”
Ayari added that he was sure IS militants had attacked Tunisia because the country was showing the world a successful example of moderate, democratic Islam that undercut their message.
The country, in which the Arab Spring began more than four years ago, is being held up as perhaps its only success.
Tunisians rose in peaceful protest against their long-time authoritarian ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and forced him to flee.
After the turbulence, they have achieved a democratic government and relative peace and calm.
Independent Foreign Service