Scotland Yard says it has established a solid link between the terrorist attack on a Tunisian holiday resort last month and an earlier shooting at the national museum in Tunis.
The Foreign Office has told British tourists not to visit Tunisia after 38 holidaymakers, 30 of them British, were shot dead on a beach by a lone gunman in Sousse last month. Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack.
Counter-terrorism officers now say they have evidentially linked that attack by Seifeddine Rezgui with the March attack on the Bardo museum in the country’s capital, in which 21 tourists and a policeman were killed.
Speaking at a briefing for reporters at Scotland Yard, commander Richard Walton, head of counter-terrorism command, said: “We are now linking evidentially the Bardo museum investigation in Tunisia, that attack, with the Sousse investigation.
“We have written to the coroner advising him of the connection between the two.”
Walton said he could not give specific details of the evidence linking the two attacks but said it was “strong”.
Tunisian authorities have arrested 159 people in relation to the attack in Sousse, with 15 charged with terrorism-related offences. Walton said the authorities had 250 investigators working on the inquiry.
Walton said that as well as the 30 Britons who were killed in the shooting, 17 more were injured, out of 34 people in total.
He appeared to rule out theories of a second gunman at the beach, saying witness reports matched the description of a lifeguard who is understood to have used a weapon to confront Rezgui.
British investigators have taken a total of 459 witness statements from the day of the attack, with more than 370 photos and videos from mobile phones and other devices being assessed.
The killer’s body remains unclaimed by his family over fear of reprisals and due to shame, Walton said.
After the 26 June shootings at the Mediterranean resort of Port El Kantaoui, the Tunisian president, Beji Caid Essebsi, decreed a state of emergency in the country.
“We are engaged in a ferocious war against terrorism to protect lives and property, defend the republican regimes,” Tunisia’s prime minister, Habib Essid, told parliament.
“We would not have felt obliged to decree the state of emergency if we were not convinced that our country was facing numerous terrorist plans to destabilise the country.”
As many as 3,000 Tunisians are feared to have gone to Iraq, Syria and Libya to fight with militant groups, raising fears of returning jihadis plotting attacks on home soil.
