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Some 40 Czech nationals who were vacationing in Sousse, Tunisia, just 150 metres from where a gunman opened fire on vacationers with a kalashnikov on Friday, have made clear they want to return home to the Czech Republic as soon as possible. One of the Czechs told the Czech News Agency that most did not want to be in the country a single day after a cold-blooded killer gunned down dozens of westerners and locals at the seaside. Thirty-eight people were killed; there were no Czech victims. Czech diplomacy has recommended a government plane be sent to facilitate the Czechs' return but that is being reported as unlikely. The Foreign Ministry is instead cooperating with travel agencies to try and secure places on earlier return flights which are now largely booked up.

Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek told Czech TV he understood why Czech tourists in the vicinity of the tragedy could hardly continue with their vacations, saying diplomatic staff had been boosted in Tunisia to provide assistance. The Association of Czech Travel Agents said on Saturday that some 30 Czechs wanted to return out of 3,000 or so vacationing in Tunisia. Czech travel agencies have been offering clients at home the chance to still change pre-paid destinations. In some cases, they have offered refunds.

Interior Minister Milan Chovanec has confirmed that security in the Czech Republic has been increased at embassies, airports as well as Czech branches of Air Products, the American firm which was targeted in a terrorist attack in France on Friday. The firm has branches not only in the capital but in Brno and Děčín. Attacks on Friday took place in France, Tunisia, and Kuwait, leaving scores of dead. In response, Czech travel agencies are allowing customers bought package holidays to Tunisia to change destinations: CK Fischer said 80 percent who had prepaid holidays had already done so. The Czech Foreign Ministry is reportedly treating the attack in Sousse, Tunisia, as an isolated incident but some analysts suggest the attacks, which bear the hallmarks of IS or Isil as it is also known, were possibly coordinated. The Guardian notes the attacks come close to the first anniversary of the terrorist organisation's declaration of a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.

Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, on an official one-day visit to France, marked the 97th anniversary of the founding of the Czechoslovak armed forces on Saturday at a memorial site in Darney, where some 6,000 Czechoslovak legionaries swore allegiance to the emerging Czechoslovakia on June 30, 1918. In a short speech, Mr Sobotka said that Darney was of key importance for Czech statehood. Dozens of Czech and French soldiers as well as WW II veterans attended the ceremony.

The number of Czech tourists planning an immediate return from Tunisia following Friday's attack in Sousse is minimal, Jan Papež, the spokesman for the Association of Czech Travel Agents has said. He stressed that only around 30 out of 3,000 Czechs vacationing in the North African country had expressed the desire to return home early. Neither is the country's Foreign Ministry considering sending a special government jet. The Czech Republic's ambassador to Tunisia, Jan Vyčítal, is due to visit the site of the deadly attack and to also inform Czech vacationers about the security situation in local areas and resorts.