Tunisia launches nationwide manhunt for accomplices

SOUSSE, Tunisia — The student who massacred holiday makers on a Tunisian beach and at a resort hotel acted alone during the attack but had accomplices who supported him beforehand, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday.

Police were searching nationwide for more suspects after the slaughter of at least 38 people in Sousse on Friday, in Tunisia’s deadliest such attack. The attacker’s father and three roommates were detained and being questioned in the capital, Tunis, Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told The Associated Press.

The attacker has been identified as Seifeddine Rezgui, a 24-year-old graduate of Tunisia’s Kairouan University, where he had been living with the other students. The attack was claimed by the radical Islamic State group.

“We are sure that others helped but did not participate,” Aroui said. “They participated indirectly.”

Investigators believe the suspected accomplices provided the Kalashnikov assault rifle to Rezgui and helped him get to the scene, Aroui said.

Authorities have yet to suggest a motive. A security official said the student frequented an “unofficial” mosque in the Tunisian holy city of Kairouan for the past two years.

The official said a swimmer had found the attacker’s cellphone in the Mediterranean. The phone showed the attacker spoke with his father just before his assault, the official said.

Friday’s attack on the Imperial Marhaba Hotel shook the North African nation, which thrives on tourism and has struggled since its 2011 revolution to be the one Arab Spring country that succeeds in transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy.

The bloodshed shocked European nations worried for the safety of their citizens who populate Tunisian beaches — and about what it may mean for their own countries in an age of globalized terrorism.

Tunisian authorities moved quickly to bolster security for tourists and other vacationers. Interior Minister Mohamed Najem Gharsalli announced late Saturday the deployment of 1,000 extra police officers at tourist sites and beaches.