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* Thousands have left Tunisia since Friday attack
* Sector will lose $500 million this year, says govt
* Tour operators offer delays, others cancel
* Security should have been tighter, say tourists
By Patrick Markey
SOUSSE, Tunisia, June 30 (Reuters) - Tunisian shopkeeper Aghmi Bubaker doesn't need to be told that he is experiencing the worst threat yet to his forty-year career in tourism - the bullet hole in his battered green Mercedes Benz is a daily reminder.
Last Friday when a gunman attacked the Imperial Marhaba hotel in Sousse in the name of Islamist militancy, Bubaker rushed dozens of holidaymakers into his store until the shooting - in which 39 foreign tourists were killed - was over.
Now, looking at his car and bullet holes in nearby walls, Bubaker wonders whether his country's tourism industry is at an end too. Thousands have left the North African country since Friday and the government estimates the sector will lose $500 million this year - a quarter of last year's total revenues.
"If tourists don't come back, it's over," Bubaker said outside his store filled with flags, T-shirts and crafts.
"It's not just me, it's two million Tunisians who live off this business, hotels, taxis, stores, restaurants."
Friday's attack hit at the heartland of Tunisia's Mediterranean beach resorts, popular with Europeans who make up a portion of the six million holidaymakers who visit each year places like Sousse, Hammamet and the island of Djerba.
Targeting tourists and sparing Tunisians, the gunman Saif Rezgui shot his way through the hotel, leaving bodies on the beach, before he was killed by police. Most victims were Britons and authorities are still investigating his militant ties.
It is the second attack against a Tunisian tourism this year after the massacre in March at the Bardo museum in Tunis where two gunmen opened fire on tourists as they arrived by bus. Spanish, Italian and Japanese were among the 21 dead.
STRATEGY
Targeting tourism in Tunisia appears a deliberate strategy.
The country is just emerging into full democracy after its 2011 uprising against autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and is at a sensitive juncture as the new government tries to kickstart the economy and create the jobs demanded by young Tunisians.
Tourism provides seven percent of gross domestic product, a major source of foreign currency revenues and the largest source of employment outside agriculture. Unlike its wealthy neigbours Algeria and Libya, it has few natural resources like oil.
With its clear Mediterranean waters, solid tourist infrastructure and desert treks to the south, Tunisia has until now been popular with Europeans, attracting 760,000 trips by French holidaymakers, 425,000 by Germans and 400,000 by Britons in 2014, according to Euromonitor International.