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The two terrorist attacks on foreign tourists in Tunisia have been officially linked by British police.
Scotland Yard said that the link between the beach atrocity that claimed a total of 38 lives and the attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March in which 22 cruise passengers on excursions died was based on strong evidence.
A total of 30 British tourists were killed on the beach in Sousse on June 26.
Commander Richard Walton, head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command, declined to give further details.
He sent officers to help the Tunisian investigation into the massacre in Sousse, which was carried out by Seifeddine Rezgui. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the atrocity.
Tunisian authorities have arrested 150 people over the Sousse killings. Fifteen of them have been charged with terrorism offences.
Tunisian prime minister Habib Essid said last night that Britain had a responsibility to stop Islamic State militants from infiltrating his country.
Western countries such as Britain and France were not exclusively to blame for the violence in Libya, a neighbour of Tunisia, but were “part of the problem,” he said
Essid told The Independent: “We must consider that the current situation is the result of the [2011] intervention, which created chaos. The solution must be a political solution.”
Tunisian officials have said that Rezgui trained in Libya at the same time as two attackers who targeted the Bardo Museum. A British woman was killed in that attack.
Walton said that a team of British officers was working closely with the Tunisian authorities on both inquiries.
Scotland Yard has taken 459 witness statements in relation to the beach attack.
Investigators believe that someone identified by a number of witnesses as a second gunman wearing red shorts was actually a beach security worker who had been trying to stop Rezgui, but they are keeping an open mind on the issue, police said.