Nine people have been arrested in connection with Wednesday's gun attack in Tunis that left 23 people dead, including 20 foreign tourists, the Tunisian presidency says.
Islamic State militants say they were responsible for #TunisiaMuseumAttack that killed 23 http://t.co/f8hzbcBd06
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) March 19, 2015
It alleged that four were directly linked to the attack and five had “ties to the cell”, BBC reports.
Islamic State has also come out to say that it was behind the attack.
A statement described the attack as a “blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia” and was published by Twitter accounts known to be reliable sources of IS propaganda.
One of two gunmen involved in the Bardo museum attack, named by Tunisian officials as Yassine Laabidi, was reportedly known to the authorities. Laabidi and his accomplice, named as Hatem Khachnaoui, were killed as security forces stormed the museum.
The suspects arrested on Thursday were not identified and no further details of their alleged involvement were given.
However, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says an al-Qaeda operative has claimed that the two gunmen had spent two months training with Islamist militants in Derna, eastern Libya, before slipping back into Tunisia.
