*** Tunisian attack: Cameron asked Britons to be prepared for casualties | THE DAILY TRIBUNE | KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

Tunisian attack: Cameron asked Britons to be prepared for casualties

London

Prime Minister David Cameron warned Britain on Saturday to prepare for further casualties from the attack on a Tunisian beach resort  already the worst loss of British life in a terror incident since the 2005 London bombings.

Tunisian authorities said they had identified at least eight Britons among the 38 killed by an Islamist gunman on Friday, but Prime Minister Habib Essid said most of the dead were believed to be British.

As the grim process of identifying the bodies continued, travel firms repatriated thousands of British tourists from beach resorts around the attack site near Sousse, about 140 kilometres (87 miles) south of Tunis. They said that scores of British tourists were being flown home Saturday after the Tunisian beach massacre claimed by the Islamic State group.

In a televised address from Downing Street, Cameron said the government would "do everything necessary to get people home" and was providing consular assistance, while experts from the Red Cross had also been sent to the north African country.

Among those caught up in the massacre at the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel, in the popular resort of Port el Kantaoui, were tourists travelling with TUI UK group operators Thomson and First Choice.

TUI sent ten planes on Saturday to repatriate about 2,500 customers, and said it was cancelling all its holidays to Tunisia for the next week.

British police are interviewing many of the returning tourists, in particular looking for any footage taken on mobile phones of the incident, and have also sent forensic experts and detectives to Tunisia to help gather evidence.

The attack dominated front pages in all of Britain's newspapers on Saturday, with headlines such as "Slaughter on the beach" accompanying stark photographs of bodies lying in the sand covered by beach towels.

It is the deadliest terror incident for Britain since 52 people were killed by four suicide bombers in an attack on the London transport system on July 7, 2005.

Many papers carried the tale of 30-year-old Matthew James, from Wales, who was shot three times in the shoulder, chest and hip while trying to protect his fiancee, the mother of his two children, survived miraculously.