Six hotel guards 'charged' with failure to help tourists during Tunisia massacre

Six hotel security guards have been charged with failing to help tourists during the 2015 Tunisia terror attack, it has been reported.

The charges come after a British judge said the police response to the attack in which 30 Britons died was "at best shambolic, at worst cowardly".

Tunisian authorities are said to have arrested a further 14 people in connection with the massacre that also left three Irish citizens dead.

Another 12 people are under investigation.

Sofian Sliti, a spokesman for judicial counter-terrorism investigations in the country, told the Reuters news agency the guards from the Imperial Hotel in Sousse had been charged with failing to help people in danger in a manner that caused their deaths.

On Tuesday Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith ruled the British victims of the attack had been killed unlawfully at the conclusion of an inquest in London.

Following the verdict grieving relatives said they planned to sue travel firm TUI over the deaths, which came just months after a fatal attack in the capital Tunis.

On Wednesday a Tunisian official provoked anger by suggesting the country had suffered more from the attack, in which a total of 38 people died, due to its impact on tourism.

Lazhar Akremi told The Times: "You lost 30 people. But the suffering is bigger for the Tunisian people.

"I mean, the reputation of the country was ruined, tourism was destroyed, also the 30 were our guests.

"They were killed while they were our guests."

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the newspaper: "While I have great sympathies for the economic damage done by the attack, for (him) to claim that that damage is greater than the loss of 30 British lives will do nothing to convince people that their security will be taken seriously.

"I call him to retract the statement for the maintenance of Anglo-Tunisian relations."