Tunisian police have arrested the girlfriend of the ISIS [Daesh] gunman who wreaked havoc on a Tunisian beach on June 26.
It has also emerged that Seifeddine Rezgui, who slaughtered 38 innocent holidaymakers in the resort town of Sousse, was spotted on the same beach just two weeks before the heinous attack which ended in him being shot dead by police.
Detectives investigating his final hours have now arrested a female student who was thought to be romantically involved with the killer over fears she helped plan the massacre.
Yesterday, the families of the 30 Britons who were killed were joined by the entire country in a minute's silence to remember those who died on June 26.
Detectives are desperately trying to find out if the man who killed them spent his last night alive with his partner.
The ISIS-trained gunman may have been with her at his home in the city of Kairouan - 36 miles west of Sousse - where he was part of a terror cell.
His girlfriend has denied having any knowledge of the plot to murder innocent people, Tunisian newspaper Assarih has said.
Meanwhile a hotel worker claims he saw Rezgui checking his phone two weeks before the attack.
He told The Times reporter John Simpson: 'When I saw him I thought he was crazy, not dangerous, but in his face he looked a bit like he was somewhere else... I didn't like him.'
24-year-old Yasser Madi from Stoke-on-Trent added: 'When I saw him he was a bit weird... He was walking slowly. He was just looking at people.
'When I saw his picture on Facebook with the machine gun I knew it was him immediately. I said "Oh my god"... everything was the same - same hair, same black flip-flops, black shorts, black T-shirt.'
Eyewitnesses described how the ISIS fanatic arrived on the beach on a jet-ski with a parasol which concealed the assault rifle he would soon use to gun down dozens of innocent people.
He then chased people into the Imperial Marhaba Hotel where he sprayed them with bullets and lobbed homemade explosives at them.
Hotel workers tried to stop the killer - a maid threw a chair from a balcony, others threw ashtrays and at one point hotel staff formed a human barrier around the holidaymakers.
Police shot him dead as he headed onto the main road, away from the devastation and bloodshed he had caused. Images of his corpse revealed an unexploded bomb and a detonator.
A lifeguard on the beach told The Times that Rezgui - a member of a sleeper cell linked to a global network of extremists - had arrived as early as 8am, suggesting that he waited four hours for it to fill up with people.
The newspaper now reports that he made a final ten-second call to an accomplice before the onslaught and then threw his Samsung Galaxy phone into the sea.
The man he called was a known jihadi in Hay al-Tadamon, Tunis - a neighbourhood rife with extremism, The Times claims.
His unnamed contact and a woman who was reportedly romantically involved with the killer have both been arrested. Police tracked his contact down after fishing his phone out of the sea.
It is hoped the woman - who is described as his girlfriend - can provide information on where he spent his last night alive.
A source in Tunisia said the woman may be the sister of another jihadi and they are believed to have met on social media.
During interrogations, the unnamed contact revealed that the killer had been recruited by Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia which was founded in his city of Kairouan, where in 2013 he attended their meetings and joined their youth wing.
Rezgui and four others - including three known fugitives who are now on the run - were part of a sleeper cell carefully trained by the group in Libya, the suspect said.
Officers looking for the fugitives have been showing locals in Sousse pictures of a white estate car following rumours that Rezgui and his accomplices were renting a nearby holiday apartment for up to two weeks.
It is thought the other militants, who have since disappeared, will return to Libya where the attack was planned.
Rezgui crossed several times into Libya through smuggling routes where up to 100 people slip across the poorly guarded border every day.
The last time he was in the country was January, when he trained in the western city of Sabratha alongside the militants responsible for the March attack on the Bardo National Museum, the country's secretary of state for security affairs has said.
A fellow student in Kairouah said the aviation student took the southern border route at least twice this year and in 2013.
By Jay Akbar
