Accomplices sought in Tunisia attack

Police in Tunisia on Sunday launched a nationwide search for people who may have helped the gunman who carried out Friday's deadly attack at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel, a popular resort in the city of Sousse.

The attacker has been identified as Seifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year-old aviation student from Tunisia's Kairouan University, where he had been living. He was killed by security forces.

Rezgui massacred vacationers on a Tunisian beach and at a resort hotel, killing at least 38 people — Tunisia's deadliest such attack. He acted alone during the attack but had accomplices who supported him beforehand, Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui said on Sunday. 

The attacker's father and three roommates were detained and are being questioned in the capital, Tunis, he said.

Friday's attack shook this North African nation, which thrives on tourism and has struggled since its 2011 revolution to be the one Arab Spring country that succeeds in transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Tunisian government has disputed that. ISIL also claimed responsibility for an attack in March in which gunmen attacked the Bardo Museum in Tunis, killing a group of foreign tourists in one of the country’s worst attacks in a decade.

"We are sure that others helped but did not participate," Aroui said of last week's shooting. "They participated indirectly." Investigators believe the suspected accomplices provided the Kalashnikov assault rifle to Rezgui and helped him get to the scene, Aroui said.

On Sunday armed police began patrolling the country's beach resorts, after the government said it would deploy hundreds more at hotels in the wake of the attack, which is likely to hit Tunisia’s tourism industry particularly hard.

The official said a swimmer found the attacker's cellphone in the Mediterranean. The phone showed the attacker spoke with his father just before his assault, the official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

British counterterrorism police official Mark Rowley said Sunday that Britain has mobilized more than 600 officers and staffers — one of the force's largest counterterrorism deployments in recent years — in response to the attack.

At least 15 Britons were among the 38 killed — the most serious attack on the British since 52 people were killed in attacks targeting London's transport network in July 2005. Three Irish nationals were also among the dead.

Britain has deployed senior detectives and forensic teams to Tunisia. It wasn't clear whether the reinforcements will all be in uniform. There is a tourism police unit in vacation areas of Tunisia, and numerous police wear civilian clothes.

Al Jazeera with The Associated Press