IS militants claim responsibility for Tunisia, Kuwait attacks

Militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Tunisia tourist hotel attack on Friday that killed 39 people, including Britons and Germans, according to a statement on a Twitter account.

"Our brother, the soldier of the Caliphate, Abu Yihya al-Kairouni, reached his target the Imperial hotel despite the security measures," the statement said. It said he had attacked a "bordel" and killed 40 "infidels".

Extremists left more than 80 people dead in four countries on Friday, three days before the first anniversary of Islamic State's self-declared caliphate. The other attacks included a bomb that ripped through a Shiite mosque in Kuwait killing 27 people, while a person was decapitated and two others injured in a gas plant near Lyon in southeastern France. And about 30 peacekeepers were killed by Al- Shabaab militants in a town in Somalia.

The attack in Tunisia was the deadliest and shattered a period of calm in a nation that's had the most successful transition to democracy among the Arab Spring countries. Most of the 39 people killed in the Tunisian beach hotel attack in the town of Sousse where British citizens, Tunisia's Prime Minister Habib Essid said. "The dead are British, German and Belgian, but most of them are British, without giving any figures," Essid told reporters on Friday night. Tunisia plans within a week to close down 80 mosques that remain outside state control for inciting violence, as a countermeasure after the attack.

Meanwhile, UK travel companies, Thomson Airways and First Choice Holidays, are sending 10 planes to Tunisia to repatriate about 2,500 holidaymakers after the attack. "We have just had confirmation that a number of the fatalities and injuries are Thomson and First Choice customers," the companies said in a statement on their website on Saturday.