Tunisia Arrests Eight with 'Direct Links' to Beach Massacre

Tunisia has arrested eight people in connection with last week's jihadist massacre at a seaside resort, as the remains of more British victims were set to be flown home Thursday.

"Eight people with direct links to the carrying out of the operation, including a woman, have been arrested," said Kamel Jendoubi, a minister who heads a crisis group set up after the attack.

"The security services have been able to... uncover and destroy the network that was behind this operation," Jendoubi told a press conference, without specifying whether more arrests would be made.

Friday's attack saw 23-year-old student Seifeddine Rezgui gun down 38 foreign tourists after pulling a Kalashnikov assault rifle from a beach umbrella at the Port El Kantaoui resort south of Tunis.

Thirty of the victims were Britons and Jendoubi said British authorities were assisting with the investigation.

"As part of the security cooperation between Tunisia and Britain, 10 British investigators are working on the probe," he said.

The jihadist massacre was Tunisia's worst ever and saw Britain's worst loss of life in such an attack since the July 2005 London bombings.

After the attack -- which was claimed by the jihadist Islamic State group -- Tunisia's government pledged to boost security around hotels, beaches and attractions.

Jendoubi said 1,377 extra armed security officers had been deployed to reinforce police already on the ground.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Thursday confirmed Tunisia's formal identification of 30 of the victims as British citizens.

 

- Minute of remembrance - 

The bodies of eight Britons were flown Wednesday to a Royal Air Force station north of London, in a solemn ceremony reminiscent of the repatriation of fallen soldiers.

"We will be repatriating another nine bodies today, and there will be two further repatriation flights tomorrow and Saturday," Hammond said. 

"Tomorrow is also a week from the date of the attack, and we will be holding a minute's remembrance at noon across the UK as well as in British embassies and posts around the world."

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to back a full investigation into the attack, calling for "a response at home and abroad" to violent Islamic fundamentalism.

Several witnesses said the shooting rampage lasted more than 30 minutes before the gunman was shot dead, but officials say police were on the scene much sooner.

President Beji Caid Essebsi admitted this week that security forces had not taken measures to protect beaches despite jihadist threats against tourists.

Friday's attack was the second on tourists in Tunisia claimed by IS in just three months, after the extremist group said it was behind a March attack on the National Bardo Museum in Tunis that killed 22 people.

Tunisian authorities have said Rezgui received weapons training from jihadists in neighboring Libya, travelling to the chaos-wracked country at the same time as the two young Tunisians behind the Bardo attack.

In the past four years, dozens of police and soldiers have been killed in Tunisia in clashes and ambushes attributed to jihadists -- mainly in the western Chaambi Mountains.

Disillusionment and social exclusion have fueled radicalism among young Tunisians, with the country exporting some 3,000 jihadist fighters to Iraq, Syria and Libya.