Tunisian authorities were yesterday hunting further suspects in the Sousse hotel attack identified by officials as part of a group trained in a Libyan jihadist camp alongside gunmen who carried out a massacre at a Tunis museum.
Thirty-eight foreigners, most British holidaymakers, were killed in Friday’s attack before the gunman was shot by police. In March, two gunmen killed 21 people at the Tunis Bardo museum, before they were also shot.
Authorities say suspects in both attacks were trained in military tactics across the border in Libya, where several Islamist armed groups have profited from the country’s political chaos to expand their influence and set up base.
“This is a group who were trained in Libya, and who had the same objective. Two attacked the Bardo and one attacked Sousse,” Lazhar Akremi, minister for parliamentary relations, told reporters. “Police are hunting for two more.”
The minister said a total of 12 people had already been arrested since Friday’s attack, the worst such massacre in the North African country’s modern history. Four suspects have been released.
This is a group who were trained in Libya, and who had the same objective. Two attacked the Bardo and one attacked Sousse
Islamic State militants, controlling large parts of Iraq and Syria, have claimed responsibility for the Tunisian attack. But authorities say the gunman was not on any police watchlist for jihadist fighters.
Four years after its ‘Arab Spring’ uprising against Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia had emerged as a model for peaceful democratic change. But it is also struggling with the rise of ultra-conservative Islamist groups, some of them violent.
Authorities had blamed a local group Okba Ibn Nafaa, which has in the past been more associated with al-Qaeda, for the Bardo attack.
But Islamic State has also inspired so-called ‘Lone Wolf’ attacks and attracted younger fighters to split from other North African groups.
More than 3,000 Tunisians have left to fight for IS and other groups in Iraq, Syria and in Libya, where a conflict between two rival governments has allowed Islamist militants to seek refuge and gain ground.
The gunmen in the Bardo and Sousse attacks were also radicalised either in local mosques or through contact with jihadist groups online, authorities said.