Three generations of Black Country family killed in Tunisia terror attack at beach resort of Sousse

Adrian Evans, a gas services department manager at Sandwell Council, was killed in the attack.

Mr Evans was on holiday with relatives. His 19-year-old nephew, Joel Richards, was also named among the dead.

The father of Mr Evans and grandfather of Mr Richards, Patrick Evans, is also believed to have been killed.

Staff are to be given counselling and support. Sandwell Council would not comment last night.

British tourist Ellie Makin, from Ripon, who was on holiday with her friend Debbie Horsfall from Huddersfield, said the gunman was next to them on a sunbed.

"He was to the right of me because we were on the last sunbed on the beach. All of a sudden I got up and just happened to look right and all I saw was a gun and an umbrella being dropped," she said.

"Then he started firing to the right hand side of us. If he had fired to the left I don't know what would have happened, but we were very lucky."

Elizabeth O'Brien, an Irish woman on holiday with her two sons in the resort, described how she grabbed her children and ran for their lives when they heard gunfire erupting from one of the hotels.

"We were on the beach, my sons were in the sea and I just got out of the sea.

"It was about 12 o'clock and I just looked up about 500 metres from me and I saw a hot air balloon collapse down, then rapid firing, then I saw two of the people who were going to go up in the balloon start to run towards me – because I thought it was fireworks,'' she said.

"So, I thought 'Oh my God, it sounds like gunfire', so I just ran to the sea, to my children and grabbed our things and as I was running towards the hotel, the waiters and the security on the beach started saying 'run, run, run!' and we just ran to our room, which is like a little bungalow.

Tourist Gary Pine said: "We saw what we thought was firecrackers going off so we thought someone was celebrating.

"But you could see then quite quickly the panic that was starting to ensue from the next resort along from us, which is about 100 yards away, and so then people started exiting the beach pretty quickly, but only when you can start hearing bullets around your ears did you start to realise it was something more serious than firecrackers." Olivia Leathley, 24, was with her boyfriend Mike Jones in her room at the Riu Bellevue Park hotel when she heard 'loud bangs' from the beach. She said: "We heard all these really loud bangs and we joked it was probably the hotel reps letting off fireworks. We just thought they were messing around.

"We saw all these people running in from the beach. There was loads of whistles going from the reps. We didn't really know what was happening so we came down to the lobby to find our Thomson rep and find out what was going on and they said 'everybody stay here, we'll let you know what is going on'.

At least 30 Britons have been confirmed dead in the terrorist attack at the beach resort of Sousse.

A source at Sandwell Council said: "It is devastating and really, really shocking that one of our workers was killed. He was there on holiday. There will be support put in place for his colleagues.

"What's happened is nothing short of barbaric. These people need to be stopped."

The slaughter happened when a gunman, disguised as a tourist, opened fire on the busy beach in the resort, a popular destination for holidaymakers from the UK and Ireland.

Terror group Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack.

SITE Intel Group, which monitors the jihadist threat, tweeted: "#ISIS claimed credit for the Tunisia hotel attack in Sousse and identified the attacker as Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani."

The gunman, has been identified as Seifeddine Rezgui who was was also known by his jihadi pseudonym of Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani, 23, was reportedly laughing as he carried out the massacre and deliberately selected western tourists.

An eyewitness quoted by local radio said: "He was laughing and joking around, like a normal guy. He was choosing who to shoot. Some people, he was saying to them, 'You go away'. He was choosing tourists, British, French."

Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that the public should be "prepared for the fact that many of those killed were British".

One of those killed is reported to be 24-year-old fashion blogger Carly Lovett from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.

Miss Lovett, who had only been engaged a few months, was with her fiancee, and they were due to return home today, ITV News reported.

Friends and fellow bloggers paid emotional tributes to the former University of Lincoln student on social media.

The university's School of Film and Media tweeted: "Saddened to hear news reports of Carly Lovett in Tunisia - Graduate of our University 2013."

A man who thought he may have seen his mother on TV as she was being taken away on a stretcher later tweeted that he believed she had died.

Conor Fulford, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, tweeted: "Hi Everyone, Sorry to tell you we lost my mother Sue Davey tonight but i want to thank everybody that tried to help me & my family"

He said his mother was a "strong" woman, adding: "Love you always Mom, I've got my teddy bear you got me tonight, Rest easy xxxx"

She was on holiday with her partner Scott Chalkley. His son Ross Nayler from Derby had launched an online plea for any information on his father but last night posted an update saying Mr Chalkley was "no longer with us".

He wrote: "Tonight me and Brad lost our Dad, unfortunately he was caught up in the sickening attacks in Tunisia and is no longer with us."

He added: "I'm sure many of you have seen the news about Sue as well so all I ask is that people let both family's grieve in peace, we are all trying to come to grips and process with what's happened."

An Irish mother-of-two who was shot dead was named locally as Lorna Carty, from Robinstown, Co Meath.

Family friends said she had taken her husband on holiday to help him recover from heart surgery, and she was believed to have gone to the beach by herself when the gunman went on the rampage.

She was a nurse in a GP surgery in Navan, aged in her 50s, and had a son and daughter. Her husband Declan, a dairy farmer, was said to be uninjured but "absolutely distraught".

The worst such attack in Tunisia's history came on the same day a man was found decapitated after an attack by suspected Islamic extremists on a French factory and a Shiite mosque in Kuwait was bombed killing at least 25 people.

Although the attacks do not appear to be directly linked they come after the so-called Islamic State called for their followers 'to make Ramadan a month of calamities for the non-believers'. UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond chaired a meeting of the Government's Cobra committee last night. Speaking at the Foreign Office, he said: "I would like to offer my condolences to the families and friends of the victims of these three shocking terrorist incidents in Tunisia, Kuwait and France.

He added: "The situation on the ground is still somewhat confused and we can't be sure exactly how many, but because of the nature of the composition of the tourist population in this part of Tunisia we have to assume that a high proportion of those killed and injured will have been British.We have had reports from families of those involved in the incident that allow us to confirm that at least five Britons have been killed in this incident."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "My heart is also with the families of all the British victims of the Tunisian terror attack. We are to help and support them."

Tunisia's Health Ministry confirmed that those killed included Britons, Tunisians, Germans and Belgians. Thirty-six others have been wounded. But the death toll is expected to rise.

Bodies covered in blankets were strewn across the beach and medical staff used sun loungers as stretchers to carry away the dead and injured. Tunisian authorities said the killer was thought to be a young student.

Witnesses said he used a Kalashnikov rifle hidden inside an umbrella to shoot the tourists sunbathing on the beach.

His killing spree ended when he was shot dead by police. A bomb was found on his body.

It comes three months after mother-of-two Sally Adey, from Caynton, near Shifnal, died in a terrorist attack in Tunis, Tunisia.

Are you in Tunisia or were you due to go? Contact newsdesk@expressandstar.co.uk