Prime Minister David Cameron has promised a “full spectrum” British response to the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) shooting at a Tunisian hotel which killed at least 38 people.
Cameron told the BBC that Home Secretary Theresa May is traveling to the North African country on Monday to attend talks on tackling the threat of extremism and visit the scene of the massacre.
He said the government and Foreign Office are working “as fast as we can” to identify British victims and notify families involved.
An RAF C17 plane is also being deployed to aid stranded British tourists and possibly repatriate victims’ bodies.
“I am keen that, as a nation, we show respect and our condolences ... and if [the families] would like for us to try and bring back the bodies of their loved ones with dignity and respect that is something we can do,” the told the Today program.
He further implored the public to stop referring to the extremists as “Islamic State.”
READ MORE: Thousands of Britons flee Tunisia as beach shooting death toll mounts
“I wish the BBC would stop calling it ‘Islamic State’ because it is not an Islamic state.”
“What it is is an appalling barbarous regime that is a perversion of the religion of Islam and many Muslims listening to this program will recoil every time they hear the words.”
Cameron added that the “poisonous death cult” was “seducing too many young minds in Europe, in America, in the Middle East and elsewhere and this is going to be the struggle of our generation and we have to fight it with everything we can.”
“There are people in Iraq and Syria who are plotting to carry out terrible acts in Britain and elsewhere and as long as ISIL exists in those two countries we are at threat,” he said.
READ MORE: A year of terror: ISIS kills over 3,000 in Syria since declaring ‘caliphate’ – report
The PM will chair another meeting of the emergency committee COBRA on Monday afternoon to discuss Britain’s response to the massacre.
Some 15 British citizens have been unofficially identified among the dead, but the total is likely to rise to more than 30 over the course of the next few days.
“This is an absolutely horrific attack and I know it has shocked the whole of the country. It has shocked the whole of the world,” Cameron said.
“We are not going to engage with people who believe there ought to be a caliphate and women should be subjugated.”
When asked whether British Muslims needed to be tougher on extremists, he replied, “My point is some organizations set themselves up as representative of Muslim communities when actually they are not. Do not treat them as spokespeople for all of the community.”
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