All our friends are dead today: Indian-origin recounts Tunisia horror

Cambridge-based Pallavi Patel still suffers from sleepless nights, as she can’t forget the images of the people who were slain by a gunman on a beach in Tunisia.

“It was God that saved our lives that day,” says Cambridge-based Pallavi Patel, who along with her husband Naynesh Patel had a close shave with death when a gunman opened fire on a beach in Tunisia, killing 38 tourists.

Patels, an Indian-origin family, had joined their friends as part of a week-long package holiday in Sousse, which became the site of a bloody massacre on June 26.

Still recovering from the horror, Pallavi says that a last-minute suggestion to head into town for some shopping instead of their daily routine of relaxing on the beach saved their lives.

“The terrorist began shooting exactly from the spot, which had been our regular every day. If we hadn’t gone out for shopping that day we would have definitely lost our lives,” said the 57-year-old, who recounts a series of coincidences that came into play on the fateful day which resulted in the death of 30 British tourists.

“When I think back there were so many points where we could have been in the path of the terrorists. We made so many friends on the beach and they are all dead today,” Pallavi said.

Explaining how she landed up in Tunisia, Pallavi said that she had suffered a mild stroke last year, resulting in her husband and her going off for a holiday.

She is now planning to seek medical counselling to try and get over the trauma, which has been giving her sleepless nights. “I just can’t get it out of my mind. I recall all the bodies we saw on the beach covered with beach towels. I feel like we have been given another life,” she added.

Her husband, originally from Bhadran in Gujarat, runs a corner shop in Milton area of Cambridgeshire and she continues to be haunted with the feeling of being unsafe even in her home when he leaves for work.

“I feel really sorry for the Tunisian people who were just amazing. They stood up like shields to save people and today they are suffering with no jobs,” Pallavi said.

Meanwhile, the UK Foreign Office issued a fresh warning this week to all British nationals in Tunisia to leave the country as a further terrorist attack is “highly likely”. It is estimated there are up to 3,000 UK tourists still in Tunisia and a few hundred British residents.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a permanent memorial dedicated to the 30 British victims of the attack, described as the worst attack on Britons since the July 7 bombings on the London transport network in 2005.