Security chief reveals gunmen who killed 23 people in Tunis left country for training in neighbouring Libya in December.
The two gunmen who killed 23 people in an attack on foreign tourists at a museum in Tunisia's capital trained at a camp for fighters in Libya, the country's secretary of state for security said.
"They left the country illegally last December for Libya and they were able to train with weapons there," Rafik Chelly told the private AlHiwar Ettounsi television channel.
The two gunmen were named by authorities as Yassine Abidi and Hatem Khachnaoui and were killed in a security operation that followed the assault on the museum.
Officials said no formal links to a particular armed group had been established, although the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group reportedly released audio recordings claiming responsibility for the attack on the National Bardo Museum.
Chelly said that Abidi had been arrested before making his way to Libya, without providing details.
Wednesday's attack in central Tunis was the country's worst since the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The security chief said the two gunmen had been "from sleeper cells" present in several areas.
"We know they can launch operations but we must piece together clues in order to conduct an arrest," Chelly said late on Thursday.
Training camps
He named locations of several suspected training camps for Tunisians in Libya, including the second city Benghazi and the coastal town of Derna, which has become a stronghold for armed groups.
Authorities say as many as 3,000 Tunisians have gone to Iraq, Syria and Libya to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, raising fears of battle-hardened fighters returning home to plot attacks.
The gunmen opened fire on the tourists - including visitors from Japan, Italy, France, Australia, Colombia, Poland and Spain - as they got off a bus then chased them inside the museum.
A Spanish man and a pregnant Spanish woman, who survived the attack by hiding in the museum all night in fear, were retrieved safely on Thursday morning by security forces, Tunisia's Health Minister Said Aidi told the Associated Press news agency.
Spain's foreign minister said police had searched all night for the pair, Juan Carlos Sanchez and Cristina Rubio.
The attack appeared to be the worst on foreigners in Tunisia since an al-Qaeda suicide bombing of a synagogue killed 14 Germans, two French and five Tunisians on the island of Djerba in 2002.
It sparked outrage, with hundreds of people gathering later in a major thoroughfare of the capital, singing the national anthem and shouting slogans against the attackers, labelling them terrorists.
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