Corkman tells of terror as gunman went on rampage in Tunisia

Tomas O'Riordain, from Cork, but now living in the UK, was sitting at the poolside of his hotel with his wife and one of his three daughters when the gunman went on the rampage next door.

“We heard something like shots, but we thought it was a jetski backfiring or something,” he said.

“We heard 10 or 15 shots in very quick succession.

“Then everyone started running in from the beach towards the hotel and we understood that something was happening.”

Others from the hotel were playing volleyball very near to the gunman, he said.

“They told us that the attacker came down the street, and directly into the hotel,” he told RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta.

“He was dressed all in black, and came in firing all about him.

“We didn’t see anything, but we heard everything. It was all over three or four minutes after it started.”

Mr O Riordain added: “We were worried about my two daughters who were at the beach but we just had to wait and see if they came back.

“When they returned, we went straight up to the room and closed the windows and the curtains, because they thought at that time that there was a second attacker with a gun so we didn’t know if there was another attacker on the loose.

“There wasn’t in the end, there was a second man waiting in a getaway car, and he was arrested.”

Mr O Riordain said his hotel, El Mouradi Palm Marina, is just to the left of the hotel where the attack happened.

It is the second time he has been caught up in a terrorist attack, as he was in Liverpool Street in London during the 7/7 attacks.