At least 37 tourists, including five Britons, are dead in a Tunisian hotel attack as Islamic terrorists reportedly ‘shoot people on sunbeds’ along a beach packed with western holidaymakers at the popular holiday resort of Sousse.

The attack, feared to be from Islamic state (IS), happened 90 miles south of the capital Tunis on the Mediterranean coast. It came within hours of another IS terrorist atrocity in France.

The government’s crisis committee, COBRA, met Friday in response to the attacks in France and Tunisia.

Ahead of the emergency meeting, the prime minister offered condolences and “our solidarity in fighting this evil of terrorism.”

“The people who do these things, they sometimes claim to do it in the name of Islam,” Mr Cameron said. “They don’t. Islam is a religion of peace.”

He said the attackers acted from “a twisted and perverted ideology we have to confront with everything we have.”

Meanwhile it has been confirmed at least one gunman has been shot dead and another has been arrested in Sousse. Details of the attack, which a local security source at the scene and radio reported was on the Imperial Marhaba hotel, are still emerging.

British tourist Gary Pine told Sky News: “We thought fire crackers were going off but you could see quite quickly what was going on.

“There was a mass exodus off the beach. My son was in the sea at the time and myself and my wife were shouting at him to get out and as he ran up he said I’ve just saw someone get shot.”

The body of one gunman lay at the scene with a Kalashnikov assault rifle after he was shot in an exchange of gunfire with police, the source said.

Tunisia has been on high alert since March when militants killed 22 people, mainly foreign tourists, in an attack on a museum in the capital Tunis. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a failed attack on the beach in Sousse in October 2013.

Additional reporting via AFP.