VIDEO: Footage shows tourists fleeing gunmen in Tunisia museum attack

Video footage had emerged of tourists feeling the gunmen who attacked a museum in Tunisia last week, killing 21.

VIDEO: Footage shows tourists fleeing gunmen in Tunisia museum attack

Video footage had emerged of tourists feeling the gunmen who attacked a museum in Tunisia last week, killing 21.

Italian tourist Maria Rita Gelotti was filming during a guided tour of the Bardo Museum in Tunis when the first hot is heard. The tourists turn around, unsure what they have heard and where the sound came from.

The footage captures their quick realisation that an attack is underway, when a second shot rings out.

Ms Gelotti can be heard asking her husband Marcello Salvatori: "Did they shoot?" The couple hid in a fire escape while three gunmen attacked the museum.

The tourists begin to look for exits, their fear palpable.

Twenty-one people were killed in the gunfire, the deadliest attack on civilians in the North African country in 13 years. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Police identified the two dead attackers as Tunisians in their 20s who had trained in Libya.

The militants, who wore military-style uniforms and wielded assault rifles, burst from a vehicle and began gunning down tourists climbing out of buses at the museum.

The attackers then charged inside to take hostages before being killed in a firefight with security forces.

The museum is a leading tourist attraction that chronicles Tunisia’s history and houses one of the world’s largest collections of Roman mosaics.

Josep Lluis Cusido, the mayor of the Spanish town of Vallmoll, said he saw people being gunned down on the plaza outside the museum before the gunmen moved inside.

“After they entered the museum. I saw their faces: They were about 10 metres away from me, shooting at anything that moved,” he told Spain’s Cadena Ser radio station.

“I managed to hide behind a pillar, there were unlucky people who they killed right there,” he said, adding that he and his wife spent nearly three hours in the museum until they got out uninjured.

Tunisians overthrew their dictator in 2011 and kicked off the Arab Spring that spread across the region.

Tunisia has been more stable than other countries in the region but it has struggled with violence by Islamic extremists in recent years, including some linked to Islamic State.

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