Shock For Tunisians Who Tried To Stop Killer

It is a macabre scene, but it is the reality of what happened here.

The blood of the victims of the Tunisian terror attack is sluiced away from the still soiled paths and roadways of the hotel complex.

Their hotel is all but closed now. The predominantly British guests, the survivors, are on their way home in hastily arranged charter flights.

The Tunisian population, who depend on the tourist business, are left contemplating what happened here.

Their simple question is why would one of their own do this? It will ruin them.

Mohammed Kamis witnessed the gunman's final moments. He was killed a hundred yards from his shop, that he passed, still firing.

As he showed me the deflated blow up boats and rubber rings that were broken in a hail of bullets he said he had no answers to the events of Friday.

"What can we do. He isn't one of us is he?" he said.

"We saw him walking and then turning and firing at people chasing him. Workmen on the roof above threw cement and bricks at him trying to kill him. Then he turned the corner and the police saw him and he was killed," he added.

There were many other lucky escapes.

Kevin McCabe from Ireland, now resident here, took me round the shops and hotels where his friends are now looking at another summer of almost no trade.

He walks the same stretch of beach where the attack happened every day.

"I saw the guy. If I had stayed where I was I would be his first victim," he said as we walked the beach where the shooter attempted to escape.

"What is really important to remember is that local people took this guy on.

"They chased him and he fired and I saw them falling. I don't know if they were hit but they went down.

"They were unarmed but they chased him and others did everything they could to save the foreigners. It is amazing," he said.

The various hotel owners on the beach are demanding more security with armed police on patrol and at the hotels. But they want more.

"There needs to be a change in attitude both here and abroad," said Mohammed Becheur, the owner of the hotel where most casualties were recorded.

"The international community and Tunisia needs to control these Islamists or we will have lost."

Tunisia has suffered badly since the Arab Spring revolution of 2011.

Things have got better - but the terror attacks have continued and it is widely acknowledged that there is nothing to suspect they will stop any time soon.

:: Watch Death On The Beach, a special Sky News report on Tunisia at 9.30pm today on skynews.com, mobile, tablet, Sky go, or on TV: Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freesat 202, Freeview 132.