Tunisia beach killer trained with museum gunmen

TUNIS, Tunisia — The young college student who killed 38 tourists in a Tunisian seaside resort was in a jihadist training camp in western Libya at the same time as the two attackers who hit the National Bardo Museum in March, a top security official said Tuesday.

The revelation confirms repeated fears that the strong presence of the Islamic State group in neighboring Libya has become a direct threat to Tunisia, the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.

“It has been confirmed that the attacker trained in Libya with weapons at the same period as the Bardo attackers,” said Rafik Chelli, the secretary of state for the Interior Ministry.

Chelli said Seifeddine Rezgui, a 24-year-old Master’s student in electrical engineering, left his studies at Kairouan University and sneaked into the western Libyan town of Sabratha in January, which is when the two young men who carried out the museum attack in Tunis were there.

In the wake of last week’s devastating attack on the beach near Sousse, there has been criticism of the government’s handling of security, especially since tourists had clearly become a target after the museum attackers killed 22 people in March.