The gunman who massacred 38 foreign tourists at a beachside hotel on Friday last week trained with a militant group in Libya this year alongside two Tunisians who later killed 22 people at the national museum, security officials said on Tuesday.
Tunisian Secretary of State for the Interior Rafik Chelli told media that the gunman at the hotel, Seifeddine Rezgui, 24, a graduate of a technical college from central Tunisia, crossed illegally into Libya in January and trained with an extremist group near the northwestern town of Sabratha, near the capital, Tripoli.
Tunisian officials have said that the two gunmen who attacked the National Bardo Museum in Tunis in March, killing 21 tourists and a police officer, also crossed into Libya for several weeks of training.
Chelli said that they and Rezgui had been there at the same time.
The news that Rezgui trained in Libya was first reported on Monday in the El Chourouk, which quoted an anonymous source.
Police officials in Kairouan, the city that is home to the college where Rezgui studied, on Monday said that he had trained for two years in Libya, but it was not clear whether they had specific information or were repeating news reports.
Rezgui opened fire on vacationers on their lounge chairs at the beach resort hotel in Sousse, then strode through the hotel complex for about 30 minutes, reloading his rifle several times and tossing several grenades, officials said.
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