Tunisia arrests 8 with direct links to beach attack
38 killed at seaside resort
TUNIS, Tunisia — Eight people are in custody in Tunisia, suspected of having direct links to a deadly beach attack that killed 38 people, but four others were released, a minister said Thursday.
The arrests followed the questioning of 12 people, said Kamel Jendoubi, the minister for constitutional affairs and civil society.
Jendoubi said authorities had arrested 1,000 people since the March attack on the Bardo Museum in the capital that left 22 people dead.
The British Foreign Office, meanwhile, raised the death toll of British tourists killed in last Friday’s attack from 27 to 30. Other European tourists were among the dead. The attack was Tunisia’s deadliest ever and threatens to be a devastating blow to its tourism sector, which provides jobs to about 15 percent of the workforce.
In Britain, bereaved relatives looked on at an air base in Oxfordshire as a military plane flew home the remains of nine Britons on Thursday, a day after another flight returned eight other bodies.
The eight bodies flown home to the Brize Norton air base on Wednesday included three generations in the same family — student Joel Richards, 19, his 49-year-old uncle Adrian Evans, and Richards’ grandfather Patrick Evans, 78. They were on vacation to celebrate Richards finishing his second year at university.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which Tunisian student Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire on a beach in the seaside resort of Sousse. He was later killed by police.
Tunisian officials said Wednesday that the gunman had trained in Libya at the same time as the militants who carried out the Bardo attack.
The link highlights the risks Tunisia faces as its larger neighbor descends into anarchy, with rival governments fighting each other as well as Islamic State militants looking to use the oil producer as a springboard for attacks in Europe.
Jendoubi said Thursday that the eight still detained — seven men and one woman — are suspected of direct links to the attack. He did not elaborate on their identities or roles, saying only that the investigation “has allowed us to discover the network behind the operation in Sousse.”
The minister also urged greater international terrorism cooperation in a “war ... between democratic Tunisia and an international jihadi movement.”
Sofiane Selliki, an official in the prosecutor’s office, said no one had been brought before a judge for charges.
More Tunisians — about 3,000 — are believed to have gone to Syria and Iraq to join radical jihadis including the Islamic State group than fighters from any other country.
British vacationers made up the majority of the 38 killed on the beach, and further repatriation flights are expected in coming days.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said earlier that all 30 British victims have been identified. Package holiday firms Thomson and First Choice confirmed that all were their customers.
A minute’s silence in memory of the victims will be observed today, and flags will be flown at half-staff over London’s Whitehall and Buckingham Palace.