Third gunman 'on the run' after Tunis museum attack

PARIS: A third gunman in the massacre of tourists at Tunisia's national museum is still at large four days after two others were killed, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said on Sunday.

"Definitely there were three," Essebsi told France's Itele television and Europe 1 radio.

"Two were killed, but there is one who is now on the run," he said. "In any case, he will not get very far."

The gunmen killed 21 people in an attack Wednesday at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis, all but one of them foreign tourists.

This was the first acknowledgement that there were three attackers. Two others, who were killed by security forces, were identified as Jabeur Khachnaoui and Yassine Laabidi.

Responsibility for the massacre was claimed by the Islamic State group, an insurgency seeking to establish an Islamist government or caliphate across Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Muslim world.

"There were failures" which meant that "the police and intelligence were not systematic enough to ensure the safety of the museum", Essebsi told Paris Match magazine in an interview published Saturday.

Deputy speaker Abdelfattah Mourou had told AFP on Friday that guards supposed to be protecting the museum and the nearby parliament were having coffee at the time of the assault.

The victims were all tourists, apart from a Tunisian policeman. The dead foreigners were four Italians, three Japanese, three French, two Spaniards, a Colombian, an Australian-Colombian, a British woman, a Belgian woman, three Poles and a Russian

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