STV News: Minute’s silence to remember victims of Tunisian beach massacre

Saddlers fans Joel Richards, 19, his uncle Adrian Evans and grandfather Charles “Patrick” Evans, 78, were among those gunned down in Sousse, while Joel’s 16-year-old brother Owen survived the attack.

Mayor of Crawley Chris Cheshire said after the silence: “We wanted to find a way, not just marking the one minute’s silence, but by somehow transmitting the fact that our love and care for them will somehow sustain them”.

The Queen, who was at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in his constituency in Oxfordshire, joined millions of people across Britain as Big Ben chimed midday.

9/11 On the first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001, Britain joined countries around the world with two one-minute silences to mark the exact moments that hijacked jets hit the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.

Tunisian prime minister Habib Essid joined the UK’s ambassador to the country Hamish Cowell at a memorial event on the beach in Sousse.

Local authorities, police forces and schools were asked to observe the silence. Among them were 30 Britons.

“Accounts are being taken from those who are deemed significant”, he said.

Millions observed the minute’s silence.

At Wimbledon, the start of matches will be delayed by 45 minutes to 12.15pm (2115 AEST) to allow spectators and tennis players to take part. It was led by the drivers and teams and observed through the paddock and by the crowds in the grandstands.

Dozens of tourists had come to pay respects too.

Some 30 British people were among the 38 murdered by gunman Seifeddine Rezgui last Friday.

Some tourists, yet to return home after last week’s massacre, laid flowers in the sand as a plaque commemorating the dead was unveiled.

Allen Pembroke, 61, from Chelmsford, Essex, helped a badly wounded woman in the aftermath of the attack.

In London, employees of travel group TUI, which includes operators Thomson and First Choice that organised the holidays of all of the British victims, stood in silence outside the company’s headquarters.

Further inquests into deaths of the British victims are expected to open over the next few days.

West London coroner, Chinyere Inyama, was expected to immediately adjourn the hearings in which a cause of death would be confirmed and the bodies then released to families.

The bodies of 25 of the British victims have now been returned to the United Kingdom.

Those brought back to British soil today were Christopher and Sharon Bell, Scott Chalkley, Sue Davey, Angela and Raymond Fisher, Eileen Swannack, and John Welch.

Among the three Irish citizens killed in the attack were Larry and Martina Hayes, who were buried on Friday in Athlone in the Midlands Region.

The gunman, who had links to terror organisation Islamic State, opened fire on tourists in Sousse a week ago today.