Security official says Seifeddine Rezgui was trained in Isis base in Sabratha as Tunisia police hunt for accomplices

Tunisian authorities have said the gunman who killed 38 tourists in Sousse on Friday was trained at the same Libyan jihadist camp as the two suicide gunmen who attacked the Bardo museum in Tunis in March.



The Libyan link was disclosed by a senior security official, Rafik Chelli, who told Associated Press that Seifeddine Rezgui, who carried out Friday’s beach hotel attack, trained at an Islamic State base near the western town of Sabratha in January.

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“Investigations show Saif Rezgui was in contact with terrorists in Libya and that he is likely to have trained in a Libyan camp,” he said.

Also training at the base at the same time were the two gunmen who killed 22 people in an attack on the Bardo museum, said Chelli.

The claim highlights the growing link between terrorists in both countries, with a growing stream of Tunisians smuggling themselves into Libya to join the ranks of Isis.

Meanwhile, security forces are on alert across Tunisia after police released the names and photographs of two alleged Rezgui accomplices who are suspected of aiding his attack. They are both on the run and are presumed to be armed.

At least 21 Britons are known to have died when Rezgui, 23, rampaged through the luxury Imperial Marhaba hotel on the Sousse beachfront.

Investigators are unsure of how much help he had. Seven people have been arrested on suspicion of aiding Rezgui, with Rafik al-Tayari, a 24-year-old business co-ordinator from Tunis, and Mohammed al-Charadi, 23, a student from Bizerte, now being hunted. Wanted posters of the two men have been circulated throughout the country.

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The Libya revelations will pose a challenge for David Cameron, who promised a “full spectrum response” at the weekend after the Sousse attack caused the greatest loss of British life in a terrorist attack since the 7 July 2005 bombings. While Britain has joined the US and other nations in bombing Isis positions in Iraq, the west has so far refrained from taking military action against Isis in Libya.

The Isis base where the gunmen are believed to have trained is near Sabratha, 40 miles west of Tripoli, at al-Ajaylat, a former military compound on the outskirts of the city. In recent months, the area has been engulfed in the country’s ongoing civil war and it is unclear if Isis is still in the area.

Jihadist units from al-Ajaylat were blamed for the cold-blooded killing of British oil worker Mark De Salis, whose body was found on a nearby beach together with his New Zealand girlfriend, Lynn Howie, in January last year. Both had driven to the beach for a picnic and were found face down on the sand having been killed at close range.

Libyan sources said at the time that local police were too frightened of the jihadist units to investigate the murders, which were never solved.

The base was home to the west Libyan branch of Ansar al-Sharia, the organisation blamed by Washington for the murder of the US ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in 2012. Late last year, the unit re-flagged itself as part of Isis.

UK officials still believe only one gunman was responsible for the shootings in Sousse but some of the Marhaba survivors insist there was a second gunman present.

Rezgui, who was shot by security forces outside the hotel, was clean shaven, but witness Tom Richards, from Cheshire, who came face-to-face with a gunman in the hotel, insists the man he saw had long hair and a prominent beard. Hotel staff and lifeguards said they remembered only a lone gunman on the beach itself.

Moez Afra, who saved the life of a badly injured British man by dragging him across the sand to safety during the attack, said a single gunman had begun firing on the beach, then moved into the hotel before returning to the beach again.

Afra and other beach staff on duty that day say they are unsure how Rezgui got to the beach; lifeguards on both sides of the hotel insist they did not see Rezgui pass. “We all know each other; we would have noticed a stranger,” said Afra.

Daniel Ben Said, who supervises jetskis on the beach and used his motorboat to pluck a British man who had been wounded in the arm from the sea, scotched reports that Rezgui had reached the beach using a boat or jetski. “Not a jetski,” he said. “I would have seen it. I was right here.”

The team of British police officers in Tunisia are concentrating on identifying the dead and on the repatriation of the bodies, which will begin on Wednesday.

The British police investigation is officially limited to providing information for coroners who will hold a series of inquests into the deaths.

All the wounded Britons have been repatriated, including four severely injured people who were brought back by an RAF C-17 transport plane. Cameron’s office said the bodies of the dead would be flown back from Wednesday.

The Tunisian president, Beji Caid Essebsi, said the attack had come days before the country planned to implement heightened security measures for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, but those plans had not anticipated an assault on tourist beaches.

The tourism minister has predicted that the industry will lose $500m (£317m) this year.



In an interview with Europe 1 radio, Essebsi said an investigation was under way into security failures. Armed police would patrol tourist beaches and army reservists had been called up, he added.

Essebsi said: “It is not a perfect system. It is true we were surprised by this affair. They took measures for the month of Ramadan but never did they think the attack would be on the beaches against tourists and the system of protection was set to start 1 July.”

Essebsi, 88, is a veteran of Tunisia’s pre-revolutionary regime and was elected last autumn on a platform of restoring security and dignity to the country.

Additional reporting by Vikram Dodd in London

